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, 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, 12:00-1:00 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).

For additional information or to be added to the email list for announcements, please contact Lesley Harkins.

Fall 2020

**Our fall seminars will be taking place online. **

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Mary C. Waters, PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences and the John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, and interim director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (2020-2021), will present “Long-term recovery after Hurricane Katrina: Health, geographic mobility and well-being in the mixed methods RISK study.”

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Roland Neil, PhD candidate in sociology, Harvard University, will present “Place-based discrimination in policing.”

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Ethan Raker, PhD candidate in sociology, Harvard University, will present “Stratifying disaster: State aid, institutional processes, and inequality in American communities.”

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Allison Daminger, PhD student in sociology & social policy, Harvard University. Allison’s seminar is “The persistence of gender in cognitive household labor patterns.”

Please REGISTER.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Ariela Schachter, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Schachter’s seminar title is “Ancestry, color, or culture? How whites racially classify others in the U.S.” Please REGISTER.

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Courtney Cogburn, PhD, associate professor of social work, Columbia University, will present “Racism, culture + health: Conceptual and methodological innovations.” Please REGISTER.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Merlin Schaeffer, PhD, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen will present “Healthcare chauvinism during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Please REGISTER.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Sharrelle Barber, PhD, assistant professor, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health, will present “Racism in the time of COVID-19: Implications for theory, data, and action.” Please REGISTER.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Dustin Duncan, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, will present “…I’m afraid of White people”:  Anti-Black racism, police violence and the health and well-being of Black sexual minority men.  Please REGISTER.

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Kristi Williams, PhD, professor of sociology, The Ohio State University, will present “Missing links? Social developmental pathways from childhood adversity to later life health.”  Please REGISTER.

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Neil Mehta, PhD, associate professor, preventive medicine & community health, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, will present “US life expectancy trends and stalling declines in cardiovascular disease mortality.” Please REGISTER.

Past Social Demography Seminars