Academic Profile

Dr. Andrea Tilstra is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, in the Demographic Science Unit and at Nuffield College. In her MSCA fellowship, HealthShocks, she studies the indirect consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for population health, with a keen eye toward maternal, fetal, and child health.

Andrea is a quantitative medical sociologist and social demographer, and her research focuses on understanding how environmental shocks experienced by an entire society (e.g., period effects) influence two key demographic processes: fertility and mortality. In her work, she identifies the health consequences of policy changes, institutional practices, and large public health crises – revealing how these trends further exacerbate existing health inequalities.

Previously, she was a senior postdoctoral researcher (2021-2023) with Prof. Jennifer Dowd on her ERC grant, MORTAL. Andrea holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder (2021). Her work has been published in leading interdisciplinary journals including Demography, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, American Journal of Epidemiology, and International Journal of Epidemiology, and more.