Prof. Dr. Anja LEIST

Prof. Dr. Anja Leist is Associate Professor in Public Health and Ageing and Vice-head of the Institute for Research on Socio-Economic Inequality (IRSEI) in the Department of Social Sciences. She is also Special Advisor to the rectorate on the topic of Research Assessment.

Anja is expert on the topics of health inequalities, ageing, and cognitive ageing, adopting a social epidemiological and life course perspective. She had research stays at the universities of Luxembourg, Zurich/Switzerland, and Rotterdam/Netherlands, and was funded by several national and European funders, among them the European Research Council on the topic of cognitive ageing (CRISP, grant agreement no. 803239, 1.15 mio. EUR). The CRISP project investigates cognitive aging from a social and behavioral (risk reduction) perspective with a focus on inequalities related to education and gender and applies new modeling techniques to improve dementia risk prediction. See all publications and updates on the CRISP project here.

Anja has published in Q1 and top-decile journals of Health (social sciences), Public Health, and Multidisciplinary. See her full list of publications here. She is elected Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. She serves as expert on the topics of dementia, health politics, and ageing on several advisory and editorial boards, committees, and working groups. Anja is main supervisor of two doctoral students in Social Sciences (Jung Hyun Kim) and Psychology (Matthias Klee), and member of the supervision committee of another five doctoral students. She further supervises three postdocs: Dr Fabiana Ribeiro and Dr Anouk Geraets are postdocs on the ERC Cognitive Ageing project CRISP, and Dr Ana Carolina Teixeira Santos who formerly led the MEDITAGING project funded by the FNR and now works on the CoVaLux project.

Anja is Strategic Advisor to the World Young Leaders in Dementia network a.s.b.l. (WYLD) and represents the WYLD network on the World Dementia Council.