Professor Dr Susanne Zank

After studying psychology at Technical University Berlin and in Vancouver (Canada), Susanne Zank was a research associate, assistant and senior assistant at TU and Freie Universität Berlin. She also worked as a licensed psychological psychotherapist in the Gerontopsychiatric Day and Outpatient Clinic at the University Hospital. She completed her habilitation in psychology at FU Berlin. In 2006 she was recruited as Chair of Clinical Psychology to the University of Siegen. Since October 2010, Professor Zank has held the Chair of Rehabilitation Science Gerontology at the University of Cologne and is Director of the Centre for Curative Pedagogical Gerontology.

From 2013 to 2017, Professor Zank was Dean of Research and has been Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences since 2017. From 2016 to 2020, she was President of the German Gerontology Society, and from 2013 to 2023 spokesperson of the research training group Gerontological Research on Well-Being (GROW). Since 2016, she has been co-project leader of large representative studies on well-being in old age at the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (ceres).

Susanne Zank’s research interests include stress and intervention research among family caregivers of dementia patients, intervention and rehabilitation research among the elderly, and the evaluation of outpatient and inpatient care.