Julia Leesch

Julia Leesch is a Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, affiliated with the Research Group on Gender Inequalities and Fertility. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Trinity College Dublin and conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of family demography and social stratification.

Her work centers on two key themes: (a) how partner search and fertility processes generate social and gender inequalities, and (b) how socioeconomic transformations—particularly educational expansion—reshape demographic behavior. This includes analyzing marital sorting patterns, educational homogamy trends, and the mechanisms linking social structures to demographic outcomes.

Recent publications examine five-decade trends in marital sorting across France and the United States, decompose educational homogamy shifts in Ireland, and investigate how school socioeconomic composition affects adolescent academic performance through classroom climate and resource allocation. Her methodology emphasizes cross-national comparisons and quantitative decomposition techniques to uncover underlying demographic dynamics.

As part of MPIDR's Gender Inequalities and Fertility research group, she contributes to the institute's mission of advancing demographic science through rigorous empirical analysis of social change and inequality.