Tilo works as an “Akademischer Rat auf Zeit” (equiv. of assistant professor) in Sociology and Research Methods at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. In the summer term 2010 (April through September), he has been on leave as a substitute professor (W2) for “Methods of Empirical Research and Social Stratification” at the University of Osnabrück, Germany.

He received his M.A. at the University of Düsseldorf (1999) and continued with graduate studies at the New School for Social Research (DAAD-scholarship). Thereafter, he has been a research assistant and lecturer at the University of Cologne and accomplished his PhD (Dr. rer. pol.; 2008) with a thesis on “Homosexuality and Human Development. Genesis, Structure and Change of Attitudes Towards Same-Sex Sexual Contacts in a Cross-National Contextual Analysis” (in German).

His postdoc study at the University of Cologne has been published as a book chapter on “Islam and the Acceptance of Homosexuality: the Shortage of Socio-Economic Well-being and Responsive Democracy” (in: Samar Habib (ed.) 2009: Islam and Homosexuality. Praeger).
Tilo is the initiator and a team member of the research project AnaGramm – Analytical Sociology as a Grammar of the Social Sciences. His focus is the development of mechanism-based explanations in survey research and the development of analytical concepts for empirical research applications.

Further research interests besides analytical sociology, action theory and mechanisms:

• methodological research: cross-national comparison, multilevel analysis, analysis of social change, attitude research
• substantive research: moral attitudes, values, religiosity; more specifically: attitudes towards beginning- and end-of-life issues (i.e. topics evolving around abortion, IVF, PID and also euthanasia, patient’s wills, palliative medicine; cf. project and DFG scientific network); sexual morality, attitudes towards homosexuality, family diversity and same-sex parenting