Team

Manuel T. Valdés (University of Vienna) - Principal investigator

Manuel T. Valdés is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna. He earned his PhD in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2021 and was previously a Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Distance Education (UNED) from 2021 to 2024. His research examines educational inequality, social stratification, and assortative mating using quantitative methods and causal inference.

Contact: manuel.tomas.valdes.fernandez@univie.ac.at

Laura Zilian (University of Vienna) - Co-PI

Laura is a Senior Scientist at NexusSoSci at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna. She has also served as an assistant professor (non-tenure track) at the Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, since August 2023. Before these roles, she worked as a researcher at the University of Graz (2018–2023) and at WU Vienna (2020–2021). She received her PhD in Environmental Systems Science from the University of Graz in 2021. Her research focuses on labour market analysis, mate markets, the impact of digital transformation, and digital inequality, with a strong emphasis on quantitative methods and register data. 

Contact: laura.samantha.zilian@univie.ac.at

Nadia Steiber (University of Vienna) - Co-PI

Nadia Steiber is Professor of Social Stratification and Quantitative Methods at the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna and a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS). She also serves as Scientific Lead of the Register Data Lab at the University of Vienna and as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Austrian Socio-Economic Panel. Her main research interests lie at the intersection of employment and family research and include the implications of life-course events. 

Contact: nadia.steiber@univie.ac.at

Christina Siegert (University of Vienna) - Postdoctoral researcher

Christina is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna. She obtained her PhD in Sociology at the University of Vienna (2025) and previously held positions at University of Bamberg (2025-2026), Vienna University of Economics and Business (2019) and Statistics Austria (2018). Her research focuses on social and economic inequalities across the life course, in particular at the intersection of employment, family, and education.

Contact: christina.siegert@univie.ac.at