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. 

Recent publications & working papers (06/2025) 

• Thome, Boris, Friederike Hertweck & Stefan Conrad, 2025. Predicting Perceived Text Complexity: The Role of Person-Related Features in Profile-Based Models. Journal of Educational Data Mining, 17(1), 276–307.

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

Recent major grants (03/2025) 

• Junior Research Group "CAM4transfo" funded by Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. Funding period: 07/2025 - 06/2028.

• "NLP in Education Research: Development of the German higher education market since the 1970s" funded by Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (with Prof. Dr. Stefan Conrad, HHU Düsseldorf). Funding period: 10/2022 - 09/2025.

More news (updated 06/2025) 

• 06/2025: The third Text-as-data Workshop will take place at RWI in Essen on 9 and 10 July 20205. 

• 03/2025: I am happy to announce that I will lead the junior research group CAM4transfo at RWI from July onwards.

• 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.