Award for research assistant for his binational double doctorate

On December 7, 2023, Dr. Benjamin Aretz, a research associate at our institute, successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Health consequences of exposure to environmental living conditions: Pathways and spatial patterns in Europe.”

In his dissertation, Benjamin Aretz examined the health consequences of environmental factors in Europe, taking into account both physical and mental health outcomes. 

By adopting a holistic multilevel approach and an interdisciplinary perspective, his research focuses on examining spatial patterns and temporal effects between the environment and health outcomes. This involves analyzing multiple current data sets using complex statistical methods. The results emphasize the importance of public awareness for the global interplay between the environment, human behavior, and health. In addition, the research highlights the relevance of both physical and mental health in addressing environmental health issues. Benjamin Aretz was a cotutelle doctoral student at the University of Rostock and the University of Groningen from 2017 to 2023. Benjamin Aretz is the first doctoral student at the University of Rostock to successfully complete such a binational double doctorate. His doctoral thesis was awarded “summa cum laude” at the University of Rostock and “cum laude” at the University of Groningen.

For his doctoral thesis, he received the 2024 Young Scientist Award for Demography in the category “Doctoral Theses,” presented by the German Society for Demography (DGD).