I am an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and the University Hospital of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Bern. My research focuses on youth mental health, the role of social stressors and biologically embedded stress in human development, self-harm, and risk-taking behaviors.
I investigate the interplay of developmental processes from a biopsychosocial perspective across multiple time scales. To investigate these processes, I combine long-term longitudinal data spanning decades, from childhood to adulthood, with short-term intensive data from ecological momentary assessments and experimental paradigms. Drawing on both population-based and clinical samples, I investigate the emergence and developmental trajectories of stress-related psychopathology and health-related behaviors, examine how these processes are embedded in and shaped by normative developmental pathways, and explore how biological and institutional transitions jointly impact developmental adaptation and risk.
I am the principal investigator of a Starting Grant awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (CHF 1.8 million) examining the emergence and maintenance of self-harm and stress-related psychopathology in children and adolescents. I am also affiliated with the z-proso International Research Network (zIReN), an Associate Editor at The Journal of Early Adolescence, and Consulting Editor at the Journal of Research on Adolescence. A core project of my current research is the ESCAPE study, which focuses on the Emergence of Self-Harm from Childhood to Adolescence.
I received my PhD from University of Muenster. During my doctoral studies, I visited the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Wilfrid Laurier University, and University of Toronto. From 2015 to 2022, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, working in interdisciplinary teams investigating adolescent development.
