Prof. Heike Trappe is the chair-holder of the department of Sociology with the main focus on family demographics at the University of Rostock. She has been working as a professor since 2007 and worked at different universities in Germany and the United States such as the Havard University in Cambridge, USA during a research year in 2003. Professor Trappe studied Sociology at the Public University in Berlin and received her habilitation there in 2006. She is currently working and researching on social inequality and gender, research on the labor market, family and life course, gender-specific division of labor in partnership and family as well as assisted reproduction.