Robin Högnäs Forskare, Docent

Robin is an Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences (Docent) and senior researcher in the Epidemiology Unit at the Stress Research Institute. She holds a PhD in sociology and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in social demography at the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Broadly, her research examines links between social relationships within institutions such as the family and the workplace, socioeconomic disparities within these institutions, and individual health and wellbeing over different stages of the life course. Robin’s work has drawn on a range of theoretical perspectives, longitudinal data from multiple Western countries, and has employed advanced statistical techniques.

Current Research

Project coordinator and senior researcher within two Forte-funded projects, both led by Hugo Westerlund.

1. Sustainable Work in an Aging Population (SWAP)

The primary goal of the SWAP project is to better understand social and health determinants of working life expectancy (WLE) - the average number of years beyond age 50 that people are expected to be employed given family, work, and health characteristics. The overarching aim of SWAP is to contribute knowledge to ongoing efforts and debates to extend working lives in Western countries. WLE is an efficient and innovative approach to measuring active work life that captures the often complex and dynamic employment transitions around retirement age. SWAP is in collaboration with researchers within the Integrated Datasets in Europe for Ageing Research (IDEAR) network (www.idear-net.net.

2. Young SLOSH: Examining the Importance and Development of Mental Health During the Establishment in the Labour Market (Y-SLOSH)

Y-SLOSH will extend the SLOSH study to include young people ages 15-29 with the overall aim of contributing knowledge about the determinants of mental health outcomes and how these outcomes affect young people’s labor market establishment and family formation. SLOSH is a large cohort studyapproximately representative of the Swedish working population and focused on psychosocial and physical work environments, mental health, and physical health. However, it lacks sufficient data on young peopleand the circumstances of their lives. We plan to begin Y-SLOSH data collection in 2024.

Teaching Experience

At Stockholm University, Robin has taught Stratificaiton and Health at the masters level. Prior to her move to Sweden in 2017, she taught for approximately eight years at American universities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She designed and taught a wide-range courses, including social stratification, statistics, sociology of the family, introductory research methods, program evaluation, and others. She has supervised and co-supervised student research projects and theses at the BA, MA, and PhD levels.