About

Dr. Jenn Dowd is Professor of Demography and Population Health and Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford. She has training in Demography, Economics, and Epidemiology, earning a PhD from Princeton University and a postdoctoral fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan.

Jenn’s academic work focuses on statistical analysis of large datasets to better understand population health and mortality. She is interested in how the economic and social world “gets under the skin” to impact our biology. This has included deep dives into the biology of stress, infections and immune function, and the human microbiome. In a currently funded 5-year project from the European Research Council (ERC), she explores reasons underlying stalling life expectancy in the U.S. and Europe.

An interdisciplinary perspective has proved especially valuable for Jenn’s work on COVID-19, which has spanned research on the demography and mortality impact of the pandemic as well as science communication through international media and as a founding member and Editor-in-Chief of the social media campaign Dear Pandemic (aka, Those Nerdy Girls).