I am a post-doctoral researcher at RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen, Germany. Prior to joining the RWI, I completed my PhD at the Faculty of Economics and Management at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. 

My research interests include the Economics of (Higher) Education, Applied Microeconomics, the use of AI in Education, and Platform Markets. 

Most recent publication (01/2025) 

Hertweck, Friederike & Judith Lehner, 2025. The gender gap in STEM: (Female) teenagers’ ICT skills and subsequent career paths, PLoS ONE, 20, 1, e0308074 .

Most recent working paper (12/2024) 

Coworker Networks from Student Jobs: A Flying Start at Labor Market Entry? Ruhr Economic Paper No. 1127 & IZA Discussion Paper No. 17541 (with Gökay Demir, Malte Sandner & Ipek Yükselen).

Most recent major research grant (10/2022) 

"NLP in Education Research: Development of the German higher education market since the 1970s" funded by Federal Ministry of Education and Research (with Prof. Dr. Stefan Conrad, HHU Düsseldorf).

More news (updated 02/2025) 

• 02/2025: Please submit a paper or extended abstract to the third Text-as-data workshop that I am organizing at RWI.

• 01/2025: Save the date for the Bildungspolitisches Forum in Berlin on 1 October 2025 which I jointly organize with Kerstin Schneider from RWI, LERN, and researchers from IAB and ifo. 

• 12/2024: Panelist at the Weizenbaum Institute about data-based management of education systems, joint panel discussion with Anne Sliwka and Alexander Brand organised by the Vodafone Foundation. Watch the video on YouTube (in German only)

• 05/2024: I am happy to announce that I will become a mentee in the Leibniz Mentoring cohort 2024/25.