I am a sociologist who is broadly interested in social inequalities, family sociology and survey research. Most of my work has a (European) comparative nature and I have experience in working with large scale comparative longitudinal data sets such as the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) or the European Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Furthermore my research is against the background of demographic change and its impact on social inequalities in the later life, family relations and the labor market.
Before coming to London I studied sociology, economics and political science and completed a Masters degree at the Freie Universität Berlin. During my studies and beyond I used to work as a research assistant at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). In this framework I have been engaged in an EU FW7 research project on the compilation of comparative indicators for various areas of social policies in European countries. This work has inspired me for my doctoral proposal "Active Ageing in European Welfare States: A Multi-Level Analysis of Activity Patterns". My aim is to analyse and explain the design of activity patterns of older individuals in a comparative and longitudinal perspective based on data from the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).