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Tess Penne
Researcher

Tess Penne

Budget and Financial Well-being

Tess has a PhD in Sociology. She studies reference budgets, minimum income protection and poverty reduction.

Tess graduated as a sociologist at the University of Ghent. After that, she worked for 8 years as a researcher at the Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp where she contributed to several national and European projects on reference budgets, poverty and social policy. In 2020, Tess completed her doctoral thesis on the added value of reference budgets to study poverty, the decency of incomes and the affordability of essential goods and services in Europe. After that, Tess joined CEBUD as a researcher. She prefers to be among people, has a strong sense of injustice and is committed to the concrete translation of research to practitioners and policymakers.

Tess enjoys spending a lot of time with friends and family. She finds her outlet in dance and creative writing and unwinds through yoga, nature or a good book. Together with her husband and baby daughter, she dreams of travelling around the world in their van.