Lærke Høgenhaven defends her PhD-thesis at the Department of Sociology

Lærke
Lærke Høgenhaven

Candidate

Lærke Høgenhaven, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen

Titel

Dual Structure of Volunteering during Crises

- A Quantitative Exploration of Work Patterns and Employment. Practices in the Danish Platform Economy.

Assessment committee

  • Associate Professor Carsten Strøby Jensen (Chair), University of Copenhagen
  • Professor Swen Hutter, Freie Universität Berlin
  • Associate Professor Sanne Lund Clement, University of Aalborg
  • Supervisor: Associate Professor Jonas Toubøl, University of Copenhagen

Time and place

Friday March 21st 2025 at 13:00

Building 35, room 35-3-12

University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Social Sciences, Gammeltoftsgade 15, 1355 København K

After the defense the Department of Sociology will host a reception in building 16, room 16-1-62 from about 15:00 forward

Info sheet: The Dual Structure of Volunteering during Crises

Summary

This dissertation investigates volunteering during crises, proposing a shift from a dominant distinction between formal and informal volunteering to a framework based on the activities and aims of volunteer efforts. It argues that volunteering during crises exhibits a dual structure, where crisis volunteering mobilizes in response to new tasks placed within civil society relating to the crisis, while ordinary volunteering, tackling tasks unrelated to the crisis, experiences a temporary decline.

Using the Danish case of COVID-19 as a case study, the dissertation answers the following question:

To what extent did volunteering during the pandemic exhibit a dual structure regarding the distinction between crisis and ordinary volunteering?

Drawing on representative Danish cross-sectional and panel survey data, the findings reveal that volunteering during the pandemic did reflect a dual structure, as crisis and ordinary vol-unteering developed differently over the course of the pandemic.

This dissertation contributes to the empirical and conceptual understanding of volunteering during crises by emphasizing the activities carried out by volunteers rather than the organizational settings in which they occur. This approach challenges the dominant formal-informal framework, which has struggled to account for the distinctiveness of crisis volunteering as well as informal volunteering, and offers an alternative focused on voluntary activities and their contexts. Additionally, the dissertation provides valuable insights into recipients of vol-unteer help, illustrating how volunteering can play a role in redistributing resources, which is a relevant issue both within and beyond crises.

All are welcome to participate