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