Academic Profile

Jenn Dowd is currently Professor of Demography and Population Health Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science. She earned her PhD in Economics and Demography from Princeton University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan in the Department of Epidemiology.

Jenn's research examines how social and biological processes interact over the life course and how social factors “get under the skin” to impact health. She has studied how socioeconomic status shapes immune function and risk of infections as well as links between infections and chronic diseases of aging. In her current 5-year Consolidator grant from the European Research Council (ERC),  she is exploring reasons underlying stalling life expectancy in the US, UK and Europe.

Jenn is also a founding member of an all-female team of PhD health scientists interpreting and curating COVID-19 and general health information for a general audience at Dear Pandemic.