Hon. Prof. Dr. Marc Luy

I have been doing research at the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) since 2008: first as an independent Senior Scientist, since 2010 as Head of the research group "Health and Longevity", and since November 2023 as Director of the VID. From 2004-2008, I was Junior-Professor of Demography and its Applications at the University of Rostock. Before becoming Junior-Professor, I was Doctoral Student and Research Scientist at the University of Rostock (1998-2001), the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (2001-2002) and the Federal Institute for Population Research in Wiesbaden, Germany (2002-2004). My undergraduate and graduate educations were at the University of Bamberg where I studied Geography, Demography, and Urban Development Planning (1993-1998). In 2004, I received the doctoral degree (Dr. rer. pol.) in Demography at the University of Rostock. I habilitated in Demography and Social Statistics in the Italian university system in 2014 and renewed this habilitation in 2018. In 2022, I was appointed Honorary Professor of Demography at the University of Vienna.

This video about my ERC Consolidator Grant project LETHE was produced by the Austrian Academy of Sciences for their Lab Stories series. Get more information on my ERC projects here.

My research is focused on differentials in health and longevity. The respective topics include differences between specific subpopulations—such as women and men or socioeconomic status groups—as well as differences between countries or smaller regional units with a special focus on differences between and within Eastern and Western Europe. The specific characteristics of my research lie in the introduction of new hypotheses to better understand the complex mechanisms behind healthy aging, and the development of innovative methods to estimate life expectancy and health expectancy for subpopulations. Until today, I have written about 100 research articles, including publications in the three demographic top journals Demography, Population and Development Review and Population Studies (see Publications).

I am highly experienced in developing and teaching courses for B.A., M.A. and doctoral students. I taught basic and specialized courses in Demography at the Universities of Rostock (1998-2001, 2004-2008), Mainz (2003), Frankfurt/Main (2003-2004) and at the European Doctoral School of Demography (2005-2017). Since 2018, I am teaching courses on demography and global health at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien), and since 2020 at the University of Vienna in the new established M.A. program "Global Demography". During 1998-2001, I helped to develop and establish the first curriculum for a diploma program in Demography in German-speaking countries at the University of Rostock, which was transformed into a M.A. program in 2003.

I received several awards and stipends, including the Gunther Beyer Award of the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS) in 2003, the first prize in the teaching evaluation of the Institute for Sociology and Demography at the University of Rostock in 2008, an ERC Starting Grant in 2010, and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016. In 2011, I was elected to the Austrian Academy of Sciences as member of the "Young Curia" and in 2016 as Corresponding Member of the Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences. Since 2014, I am also member of the Commission for Science Ethics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and I served as Secretary-General of EAPS from 2012 to 2016.