The Social Demography Seminars (SDS) at the Center for Population and Development Studies provide a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The Social Demography Seminar series thus welcomes presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, im/migration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes. The long-term goal is to build a broad and multi-disciplinary community of social demographers at Harvard.
The core programming committee includes Jason Beckfield, Mary Brinton, Christina Cross, Sasha Killewald, Joscha Legewie, Daniel Schneider, Mary Waters, and Xiang Zhou, all Harvard sociologists, plus Lisa Berkman, a social epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Elyse Jennings, a research scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.
The seminars occur on Thursdays, 12:00-1:15 p.m. in the conference room at 9 Bow Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge, unless otherwise noted. The seminars are geared towards faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and those with other academic appointments (e.g., research scientist or associate). Please note: All seminars this fall (2021) will take place online.**
For additional information or to be added to the email list for announcements, please contact Lesley Harkins.
Fall 2021
Florencia Torche, PhD, professor of sociology at Stanford University, presented
“The COVID pandemic and inequalities in infant health.”
Ohjae Gowen, MA, doctoral student in sociology, Harvard University, and Harvard Pop Center graduate student affiliate, presented
“Becoming a father, staying a father: An examination of the cumulative wage premium for U.S. residential fathers.”
Keletso Makofane, PhD, FXB Health & Human Rights Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will present
“Networked resources, causal inference and health: Evidence from population-based studies in South Africa.” Please register for online seminar.
Ridhi Kashyap, DPhil, associate professor of social demography at the University of Oxford and professorial fellow of Nuffield College, will present
“Can the digital revolution promote gender equality?”
Steven Ruggles, PhD, Regents Professor of History and Population Studies, and director, Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, University of Minnesota, will present
“A critique of the Census Bureau’s justification for differential privacy.”
David Canning, PhD
, Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Science, and professor of economics and international health in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will present
“Aging and cognitive decline: Evidence from chess tournaments.”
Alexandra (Sasha) Killewald, PhD, professor of sociology, Harvard University, will present
“Have Changing Family Demographics Narrowed the Gender Wage Gap?” (a paper co-authored with Nino Cricco).
The Social Demography Seminar on October 28th has been canceled in recognition of the Harvard Graduate Student Union strike. The seminar may be rescheduled for the spring 2022 semester; please check our website for updates.
Sean Bock, PhD candidate in sociology, Harvard University, and
Jason Beckfield, professor of sociology, Harvard University, and associate director, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, will present “
American exceptionalism, or Republican exceptionalism? A cross-national analysis of public opinion on health care policy.” Please click here to register for online seminar.
Van C. Tran, PhD, associate professor of sociology and deputy director for the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, will present
“New frontiers of integration: Neighborhood diversification in metropolitan New York.” Please click here to register for online seminar.
Past Social Demography Seminars
