Rosa Cheesman

📢🧬 Call for Papers — 5th ESSGN Conference
📍 Bologna, May 21–22, 2026

I’ll be co-organising the 5th ESSGN conference in Bologna together with Nicola Barban, Stephanie von Hinke, Paul Hufe, and Niels Rietveld @essgn.bsky.social

📄 Submit here: forms.gle/fmVDUrQqQYju...
🗓 Deadline: 1 March 2026

The geneticist looking beyond genes to help all children thrive Rosa Cheesman is exploring which environments help different children

“Education should adapt to children’s strengths and needs, not the other way round.”
@rosacheesman.bsky.social explores how children’s genetic dispositions interact with their environments to shape their mental health and learning. Annie Brookman-Byrne finds out more. boldscience.org/the-genetici...

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

🚨🚨🚨 "At least 63 times since 2007, data from some of the 28 human genomic repositories that the N.I.H. controls was improperly released to researchers, used for unapproved purposes or made vulnerable to theft..." (Gift Link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Parental Influence on Children’s Educational Achievements: Analysing Direct and Indirect Genetic Effects through Trio-GCTA Educational achievement is a key predictor of later-life outcomes, including financial security, social mobility, health, and mortality. Knowing its familial determinants, such as genetic predispositi...

1/11 New @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social led by @ESSGNetwork PhD student @qiyuanpeng.bsky.social : Parental influence on children’s educational achievement using Trio-GCTA. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Exploring educational field sorting using genetics - Nature Genetics Creative use of informed statistical genetics methods combined with large-scale genomic data has delivered insights about sorting into educational fields. This study has wide-ranging implications for ...

Exploring educational sorting using genetics

Great big picture commentary by @robbeewedow.bsky.social on our recent paper!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Humanitarianism - Margie Cheesman et al. - Technosocial Reproduction and Humanitarian Reason A white van rolled through the gates of a refugee camp in mainland Greece, its driver unloading a stack of pre-packaged lunches.

New article w @cearadau.bsky.social
Connecting feminist theory with technology studies, our lens - technosocial reproduction - explains how tech interventions should replenish rather than deplete the overlooked work people already do to sustain life.

www.eflux.com/architecture...

"Offering genetic predictions for embryos to improve health outcomes latches onto a privatization logic that does exactly the opposite and hence erodes a system based on social equality and solidarity."

Thank you @arnovanhootegem.bsky.social @gaiaghirardi.bsky.social for such an important piece!

Eight new convergence environments will address major societal challenges in life sciences - UiO:Life Science The application process initiated a year ago has concluded, eight interdisciplinary research projects have been selected to address major societal challenges in the life sciences at the University of ...

I’ll be leading a new project uniting biomedical and social sciences to learn why neurodevelopmental conditions are rising and how to better support people. We’re hiring soon! @astridsandsor.bsky.social Hedvig Nordeng Krister Fjermestad Alexandra Havdahl Nicolai Borgen www.uio.no/english/rese...

end/ ... not on here Ville Anapaz, Ralph Porneso, Joakim Ebeltoft, Espen Eilertsen, Alexandra Havdahl, Qi Qin

& participants of MoBa, FinnGen and LifeLines!

6/ Thanks to fantastic coauthors @sjoerdalten.bsky.social @dr-appie.bsky.social @ziadaayorech.bsky.social @perlinedemange.bsky.social @agnesfauske.bsky.social
@hlaht.bsky.social @torkildl.bsky.social @andganna.bsky.social @eivindy.bsky.social
...

5/ This work opens the door to understanding how personal traits like interests and social environments interact to shape major life decisions like what people study and build careers in — without implying genetic destiny.

4/ ⚠️ What this study does not say
• There are “genes for engineering” or “genes for art”
• DNA determines your degree or career
• Genetics should guide educational choices
• People fit into fixed “types”

3/ These genetically-correlated dimensions also relate to personality, mental health, behaviour, socioeconomic status.

This suggests that interests, dispositions, and opportunity structures relate to educational pathways in interconnected ways.

2/ 🧬 We analysed genetic data from >460,000 people in Norway & Finland, looking across 10 educational fields.

Two major dimensions emerged in how people sort into fields:
• Technical ↔ Social
• Practical ↔ Abstract

Genetic associations with educational fields - Nature Genetics Genome-wide analyses of 10 educational fields identify 17 associated loci. Analysis of genetic clustering across specializations identifies two key dimensions that show genetic overlap with personalit...

1/ 🚨New paper in Nature Genetics

Genetic factors are associated with the educational fields people study, from arts to engineering.

Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
FAQ: www.thehastingscenter.org/genomic-find...

Better schools can compensate for dispositions

Postdoctoral Position in Social Science Genomics | Max Planck Research Group Biosocial

We have an open postdoc position in Social Science Genomics in Berlin!

Includes gene-environment interplay within German population cohorts & experimental online survey studies to probe public perceptions of potential DNA biomarker applications

🔗 www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/2196134/2025...

Interdisciplinary paper with @paulhufe.net Astrid Sandsør and Nicolai Borgen now out in PNAS!
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Causal evidence of gene-environment interaction for reading test scores based on:
🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences
🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added

A few thoughts on Herasight, the new embryo selection company. First, their whitepaper (drive.google.com/file/d/1EpFi...) implies that competitors like Nucleus have been marketing and selling grossly erroneous risk estimates. This is shocking if true! 🧵

Extremely excited to share the first effort of the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium: A highly-powered, comprehensive GWAS of the Big Five personality traits in 1.14 million participants from 46 cohorts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper with @paulhufe.net Astrid Sandsør and Nicolai Borgen 📝
Causal evidence for gene-environment interaction based on:
🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences
🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added

Genome-wide association meta-analysis of age at onset of walking in over 70,000 infants of European ancestry - Nature Human Behaviour A genome-wide association study of age at onset of walking in over 70,000 infants found 11 significant loci. Age at onset of walking showed SNP heritability of 24%, a reliable polygenic score and gene...

Our gene discovery project on age at onset of walking is out today! Find the paper here www.nature.com/articles/s41... Huge thanks to the cohorts, collaborators & coauthors, in particular first author Dr Anna Gui 1/n

Main figure of the paper: Associations between parental mental health (anxiety and depression, alcohol problematic use, ADHD, eating disorder) with children's tests scores in mathematics, reading comprehension and English as second language at age 10.

New preprint!

We find no evidence that parental mental health influences children's academic achievement when comparing families in the Norwegian MoBa study.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Quick thread 👇

Correcting for volunteer bias in GWAS increases SNP effect sizes and heritability estimates Nature Communications - Genetic studies may be biased due to volunteer-based biobanks. Using UK Biobank, the authors apply inverse probability weighting based on UK Census data, finding that...

So happy to finally see this paper out in @natcomms.nature.com. rdcu.be/ehQsd “Correcting for volunteer bias in GWAS increases SNP effect sizes and heritability estimates”. A thread on our findings!

Vi har et skrikende behov for kunnskap om barn - Altinget Fallende skoleprestasjoner og økt fravær avdekker et skrikende behov for kunnskap for å møte vår tids utfordringer. Til det trenger vi registre fra skoler og barnehager, skriver Martin Flatø, Fartein ...

Fallende skoleprestasjoner og økt fravær avdekker et skrikende behov for kunnskap for å møte vår tids utfordringer. Til det trenger vi registre fra skoler og barnehager.

www.altinget.no/lovebakken/a...

Postdoctoral Fellow - SEGOP (277092) | University of Oslo Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow - SEGOP (277092), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Exciting postdoc opportunity in Oslo to study pathways to marginalisation with the brilliant Nicolai Borgen
Includes interdisciplinary social science genetics approaches🧬 ⭐
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

<em>Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry</em> | ACAMH Pediatric Journal | Wiley Online Library Background Neurodevelopmental conditions are highly heritable. Recent studies have shown that genomic heritability estimates can be confounded by genetic effects mediated via the environment (indire.....

New paper by the MoBa PsychGen team on 'direct and indirect genetic effects on early neurodevelopmental traits', led by Laura Hegemann. Now published in JCPP @acamh.bsky.social

with @rosacheesman.bsky.social, @ludvigdb.bsky.social, @bstpourcain.bsky.social et al.

doi.org/10.1111/jcpp...

Super happy to see this great paper by @rutheva.bsky.social, @rosacheesman.bsky.social , Ole Andreassen and myself out now!

Typical sociodemographic research on partnership dissolution has seldom considered individual differences. In this paper, we show with genomic data that they do matter.

NEW: Ruth Eva Jørgensen, Rosa Cheesman, Ole A. Andreassen, Torkild Hovde Lyngstad , "The Genetics of Partnership Dissolution."

Congratulations 🎉