I'm an economist and a Senior Research Associate in the School of Economics at University of Bristol. I completed my PhD in economics at University of Southern Denmark in 2020, where I also earned my BSc. and MSc. in economics. I'm a member of the European Social Science Genetics Network.

My research examines the links between individuals’ environments, genetics, and health, with a particular focus on how early-life circumstances shape later-life human capital and health. I have also worked on using machine learning to extract data from historical documents and on applying neural networks to time-series modelling. And long before that, I worked in web development and on early browser-based computer games.

I've been writing software for more than 20 years, and it remains a major interest. I'm especially interested in low-level optimisations, data-driven architectures, rendering, and game engines. I know R, javascript, and python really well, and am decent at C too.

You can reach me at e dot sorensen at bristol.ac.uk

Publications

• Universal investments in toddler health: Learning from a government trial

  with Jenifer L. Baker, Lise G. Bjerregaard, Christian M. Dahl, Torben S. D. Johansen, and Miriam Wüst.

  Accepted, Economic Journal.

  IZA DP, June 2023
• The Long-Term Effects of Early-Life Pollution Exposure: Evidence from the London Smog

  with Stephanie von Hinke

  2023, Journal of Health Economics.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102827 arXiv Oct 2023
• Time series (re)-sampling using Generative Adversarial Networks

  with Christian M. Dahl

  2022, Neural Networks.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.neunet.2022.09.010 arXiv Feb 2021
• Applications of Machine Learning in Document Digitisation

  with Christian M. Dahl, Torben Johansen, Christian Westermann and Simon Wittrock

  2022, Historical Methods.

  DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2023.2164879
• HANA: A Handwritten Name Database for Offline Handwriting Recognition

  with Christian M. Dahl, Torben Johansen and Simon Wittrock

  2022, Explorations in Economic History.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101473

Working papers and on-going projects

• DARE: A large-scale handwritten DAte REcognition system

  with Christian M. Dahl, Torben Johansen, Christian Westermann and Simon Wittrock. R&R International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR).

  arXiv, Oct 2022
• The long-term human capital and health impacts of a pollution reduction programme

  with Nanna Fukushima and Stephanie von Hinke. Submitted.

  arXiv, Sep 2024 IZA DP, Aug 2024
• The long-run returns to breastfeeding

  with Marco Franscesconi and Stephanie von Hinke. Submitted

  arXiv, Feb 2026
• Long-term Health and Human Capital Effects of Early-Life Economic Conditions

  with Ruijun Hou, Samuel Baker, Stephanie von Hinke, Hans Sievertsen, and Nicolai Vitt.

  arXiv, Jul 2025
• The Long-Run Effects of Good Nurses: The Case of Breastfeeding Promotion

  with Miriam Wüst.

  Draft coming soon.
• The long-term impacts of dietary policy: Evidence from the National Loaf

  with Stephanie von Hinke and Melanie Lührmann.

  Draft coming soon.
• Cold and Mortality in a Cross-Sectional and Lifecycle Perspective: Evidence from Competing Models

  with Christian M. Dahl, Martin Karlsson, and Nicolas Ziebarth.

  WP Feb 2019

Book chapters

• The prevalence, trends and heterogeneity in maternal smoking around birth between the 1930s and 1970s

  with Stephanie von Hinke, Jonathan James, Hans Sievertsen, and Nicolai Vitt

  2023, Recent Developments in Health Econometrics: A volume in honour of Andrew Jones. Emerald.

  DOI: 10.1108/S0573-855520240000297010 medRxiv, Oct 2023

Talks

(Including scheduled)

• 2026: EcHO Workshop on `Economics of Health and Human Capital`, Royal Holloway, London (May). 5th European Social Science Genetics Network Conference, Bologna (May).
• 2025: CEBI, University of Copenhagen. 4th European Social Science Genetics Network Conference, Bristol. Essen Health Conference. 38th Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics, Naples. 2nd UAM-UJI Workshop on the 'Economics of Health and Human Capital', Castellón. RHUL-City University Family and Health Economics Research Workshop, London. EEA 2025, Bordeaux. Workshop on 'Using genetic data to address economic and social issues with cohort data', UCL.
• 2024: 31st European Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics, Rotterdam. Workshop on 'Causal methods in Early-Life Research', Bad Kreuznach. Workshop on 'Early Investments, Family Well-Being, and Child Development', Copenhagen. Workshop on 'Economics of Childhood Nutrition', IFS, London. 1st UAM-UJI Workshop on the 'Economics of Health and Human Capital', Madrid. 3th European Social Science Genetics Network Conference, Rotterdam.
• 2023:  Climate Change and Health Symposium, Bristol.
• 2022:  EEA ESEM, Milan. EcHO workshop, Royal Holloway. 1st European Social Science Genetics Network Conference, Bologna. Econometric Society North American Winter Meeting, virtual.
• 2021:  Workshop on 'Methodological Advances in the Extraction and Analysis of Historical Data', virtual.
• 2020:  DIAL Workshop, virtual.
• 2019:  SSHA Annual Meeting, Chicago. Text Recognition Workshop, Lund University. Danish National Archive, Odense.
• 2018:  Essen Health Conference. University of Southern Denmark. University of Bristol.