Jens Heumann

LIFE Fellow since 2022, University of Zurich

I am a PhD student in Sociology and a doctoral research fellow in Mike Shanahan's team Social Genomics at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development. I study the causal effects of early life environment and events on mental and physical health across the life course within an interdisciplinary setting. Among other things, I use experimental and genetic data from the Zurich Brain and Immune Gene Study (ZGIG).

I graduated with a Master's degree in Sociology from the University of Bern. Prior to that, I completed a bachelor's degree in Social Work at ZHAW Zurich and worked for many years as a youth social worker. In my master's thesis, I investigated the impact of liberalization on various poverty indicators of 16 countries in the Global South using a counterfactual framework. My research interests include analytical and computational sociology, social genomics, experiments and quality of life.

Dissertation project:

Impact of early life events and socioeconomic environment on quality of life and health over the life course

Publications

Zuber, S., Bechtiger, L., Bodelet, J. S., Golin, M., Heumann, J., Kim, J. H., Klee, M., Mur, J., Noll, J., Voll, S., O’Keefe, P., Steinhoff, A., Zölitz, U., Muniz-Terrera, G., Shanahan, L., Shanahan, M. J., & Hofer, S. M. (2023). An integrative approach for the analysis of risk and health across the life course: challenges, innovations, and opportunities for life course research. Discover Social Science and Health, 3, Article 14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-023-00044-2