I am (as of August 2023) a SNSF Research Professor at the University of Lausanne. I am also an associate professor at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University. My new SNSF/ERC Starting Grant project will explore novel ways to measure different conceptions of equality of opportunity (running from Aug 2023 until July 2028). In the past, I worked at Bielefeld University, Germany, and at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. In 2015, I obtained my PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI).
My research interests are in the fields of child development, social stratification, and social demography. A major aim of my research is to understand the intergenerational transmission of advantage. For this purpose, I conduct both descriptive studies estimating differences in social mobility across countries, over time, and between groups within societies as well as causal studies that identify the effects of institutions on social mobility. A particular emphasis of my work is on socioeconomic differences in the impact of demographic factors, such as parental separation, and differences between siblings on children. Furthermore, my research explores which mechanisms underlie the intergenerational transmission of advantage, in particular the contribution of parenting to this process.
I teach a course on causal analysis with cross-sectional data at the Summer School in Social Science Methods in Lugano, you can still register for 2023: