Short presentation

My research focuses on the patterns, clustering and accumulation of disadvantage in individuals, with a specific focus on childhood adversity and precarious conditions, and the ways in which these materialize. I focus on whether and how adversity in childhood, such as exposure to poverty and illness or death of a family member, relates to outcomes in later life and identifying key drivers of health and social inequalities to improve outcomes for individuals in vulnerable positions.

Primary fields of research

Primary outcomes of interest are health conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and mental health problems, and social conditions, such as educational attainment, labour market attachment and social benefit use. Childhood adversity is hypothesized to be associated with these outcomes through behavioral, biological and mental health mechanisms. As adversity hardly ever occurs in isolation, I place special emphasis on examining the exposure to multiple types of adversity over the life course and try to unravel which types of adversity often co-occur, which implications these patterns of adversities have for later life outcomes, the pathways through which adversities occur and whether specific adversities, or aspects of patterns or pathways can be identified which seem to drive inequality in health and social outcomes. I model longitudinal trajectories of both exposure and outcomes and examine causal and mediating pathways to aid knowledge on possible targets for intervention to improve outcomes for individuals who are born into or ended up in environments characterized by adversity.

Current research

I am coordinator of the DANish LIFEcourse (DANLIFE) study. DANLIFE is a Danish nationwide register-based cohort study in which information on yearly exposure to different adversities over childhood is combined with information on hospitalizations, disease outcomes, mortality and social outcomes in young adulthood. I specifically focus on modeling exposure to multiple types of adversity over the course of childhood, identifying subgroups with differential exposure to childhood adversity and examining the association between exposure to childhood adversity and health and social outcomes in young adulthood.

CV

Appointments

2025 – current: Associate Professor –  Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

2023 – current: Assistant Professor – Department of Public and Occupational Health, Amsterdam University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

2023 – 2025: Assistant Professor – Copenhagen Health Complexity Center/Section of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health,  University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

2019 – 2023: Postdoc – Section of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

2018 – 2019: Postdoc – Department of Public Health, Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

2014 – 2017: PhD – Department of Epidemiology, University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen, Groningen & Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW), The Hague, the Netherlands

Dissertation title: Adverse life events and overweight in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood

International research stay: Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States

Grants

2024: Project 1 grant, the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) for ‘The effects of out-of-home placement on mental health, education and welfare use: applying causal inference methods to rich nationwide register data on 1.5 million children’

2019: Rubicon grant, The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) for ‘Dynamics of childhood adversity and physical health in young adulthood’.

Education

2011 – 2013: MSc – Research master Clinical and Psychosocial Epidemiology, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

Internship: Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

2009 – 2012: BSc – Bachelor Natural and Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands