I am a evolutionary biologist and evolutionary demographer. The overarching aim of my current research is to understand neutral and adaptive processes and the evolution of variability among individual life courses. I use this understanding to predict ecological and evolutionary population and demographic dynamics. Much of this work has been done in the framework of stage-age-structured populations using Markov chain theory and in the context of the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. My contributions to a new framework of the study of age-and-stage-structured populations, stirred a controversial and ongoing flourishing debate in evolutionary ecology on the role of individual heterogeneity for evolutionary demographic processes.