Prof Anja LEIST

Prof. Dr. Anja Leist is Full 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. A CRISP publication with Dr Ariane Bertogg won the 2024 Vontobel Prize in Ageing Research (Switzerland) and the Health and Medical Sociology Excellence Prize awarded by the European Society of Health and Medical Sociology (doi: 10.1007/s10433-023-00751-4).

Anja has published in Q1 and top-decile journals in the fields of Health (social sciences), Public Health, and Multidisciplinary (Scholar). See her full list of publications in the ORBilu website. 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 and regularly acts as panel member and reviewer for funders.

• CV – Anja Leist