April 12, 2024 | News | New Faces at MPIDR
Welcome, Carla Rowold!
Carla Rowold is a new team member in the the Laboratory of Population Health and Research Group Labor Demography. © MPIDR/Schulz
The Laboratory of Population Health and Research Group Labor Demography welcomes Carla Rowold as a new team member. Carla's research interests range from gender and age inequalities, life course sociology, social demography to family and retirement policy. Previously, she was a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Oxford.
When did you start?
The foundations of my academic career were laid during my social science studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin and as a student assistant at DIW Berlin. Working on interesting and relevant topics with extremely supportive and inspiring people was my motivation to continue in academia.
What’s your job at MPIDR and how long will you be working here?
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Labour Demography group and the MaxHel Centre for four years. I will be working on the accumulation of work and family complexities over the life course and their consequences for inequalities at older ages, such as health, wealth and pension inequalities.
What is your motivation to work in this field of research?
Understanding the relationship between inequalities and complexities across the life course and inequalities among older people is an extremely important issue as life courses tend to become more complex and diverse. Inequalities among older people are often more pronounced than among younger people. At the same time, societies are ageing, so that more and more people will be exposed to inequalities in old age. However, current policies are often not prepared for these dynamics, but rather build policies on the assumption of prototypical, continuous life courses that are less and less applicable to lived realities. I hope my research can contribute to more complete perspectives and, in particular, to more effective policies.
Why did you choose MPIDR as your new employer?
The MPIDR provides an excellent academic environment and infrastructure to conduct groundbreaking research. The team covers a wide range of research topics related to my research focus. In addition, I am very excited to work with the interdisciplinary and nice colleagues to bring different perspectives to new research projects. So far I have particularly enjoyed the very supportive and open atmosphere.
Where are you from? What do you miss most about home (and maybe: what don’t you miss at all)?
I come from Lower Saxony in Germany, but I have been living in the UK for the last three and a half years. So it feels more like coming home to (northern) Germany. I am especially looking forward to living so close to the beach and the sea.
What is your favorite and what is your least favorite part about work?
I enjoy all parts of research, especially being able to explore very interesting, socially relevant questions, working with highly motivated people and contributing to a better understanding of the processes that generate inequality. My least favourite part is that social skills, which I think are highly relevant to many aspects of research as well, are sometimes not as valued in academia as 'hard numbers'.