New Guest Researcher: Katarina Matthes (University of Zurich)
At PANSOC we have for several years hosted international guest researchers from all over the world. This time we are thrilled to welcome Katarina Matthes from the University of Zurich to Oslo 10-13 October 2025. While at PANSOC, Katarina will present some of her ongoing work and projects (see below) and we will discuss future collaborations.
Katarina Matthes | Institute of Evolutionary Medicine (IEM) | UZH is a senior researcher at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on past pandemics, particularly influenza, and addresses various dimensions of a pandemic, including immediate effects such as mortality, morbidity, and birth outcomes, as well as long-term health effects due to exposure in-utero or early childhood.
In addition, she investigates social inequalities in mortality trends in Switzerland, where she is currently PI of the SNSF project “Socio-demographic inequalities in the causes of death in Switzerland, 1877–2024.” In this project, individual-level historical causes of death from the city of Zurich (1877 – 1968) are transcribed for the first time in Switzerland. This enables analyses of sociodemographic and socioeconomic differences in mortality over time, as well as in-depth studies of mortality during the 1890 and 1918 influenza pandemics.