Emily Frank

I am a mixed-methods researcher studying how refugee reception policies shape refugees’ mental health and well-being in their destination country, with a focus on Germany. I aim to conduct policy-relevant research that informs evidence-based policymaking and improves the daily lives of immigrants and refugees.

I recently joined Hochschule Hannover and the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) as a postdoctoral researcher on the SUARE project. In this role, I study experiences of discrimination at school and mental health within families among immigrant and refugee youth in Germany. I am also completing a postdoc in the Research Group Health and Social Inequality at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. There, I use quantitative methods to study the determinants of immigrants’ mental health as part of an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods project of the Einstein Center Population Diversity that focuses on immigrants’ mental health in a family context.

I received my PhD in 2024 from DYNAMICS, a joint Research Training Group of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Hertie School. My mixed-methods dissertation examined how legal status shapes refugees’ experiences of citizenship and belonging at German welfare offices. During my PhD, I also worked as a research associate at the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM), where I studied public attitudes toward immigration and welfare chauvinism in the project Migration and the Welfare State.

I hold a bachelor’s degree in sociology from New York University and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

On this website, you can find more about my research projects and download my CV.