People – Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

Juli Simon Thomas

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Juli Simon Thomas, PhD, received her doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is particularly interested in the roles that education and income inequality play in social stratification and mobility. Her dissertation focused on how children’s educational attainment is affected by “event shock” brought on by disruptions in their parents’ lives. As a Bell Fellow, Juli conducted cross-national comparisons to see if children’s educational outcomes after parental disruptive events…

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Leah Abrams

Former Sloan Fellow

HCPDS

Leah Abrams completed her PhD in health services organization & policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her dissertation examined the depressive symptoms in the aging population, motivated by concern about rising suicide, drug-use, and despair in midlife. As a Sloan Fellow, Leah explored how policies that push for later retirement (e.g. changing SS’s full retirement age) leave behind certain groups of older adults who lack agency…

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Leslie Adams

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Leslie Adams holds a PhD in health behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has a MPH in health policy from the Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy and Clinical Research. In her dissertation she explored the association between depressive symptomatology and usual sources of care among Black men using a mixed method and community-engaged approach. As a Bell Fellow, she expanded on her earlier work focused…

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Onur Altindag

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Onur Altindag is an economist whose research interests lie at the intersection of population and health economics. Onur received his PhD in economics from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and he holds a master’s degree in economics from University of Paris I-Sorbonne. In his dissertation, Onur studied the male-biased fertility preference in Turkey and its implications on children’s health and parents’ labor supply decisions. During his year…

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Emilie Courtin

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Emilie Courtin has a PhD in social policy from the London School of Economics, and was a research fellow at King’s College London. Her dissertation assessed the impact of changes in living arrangements on the mental health of older Europeans and Americans. As a Bell Fellow, she evaluated the long-run consequences of parental leave and early childhood education policies on women’s health. She also explored the long-term effects of the…

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Adel Daoud

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Adel Daoud is a sociologist whose work intersects development studies, economic sociology, philosophy of science, and the political economy of health. As a Bell Fellow, he examined how International Monetary Fund policies affect child health in developing countries, and researched the benefits and limitations of employing machine learning for data extraction, such as through the use of satellite images. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Gothenburg…

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Head shot of visiting scientist Angela Dixon

Angela R. Dixon

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Angela R. Dixon earned her PhD in sociology and social policy with a concentration in demography at Princeton University. Her work broadly focuses on the ways race, ethnicity, skin color, and discrimination structure patterns of stratification across societies. Her dissertation explored perceptions of color and class discrimination in Latin America. As a Bell Fellow, she examined how the relationship between perceived discrimination and health varies across the socioeconomic spectrum. (Angela…

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F. Xavier Gómez-Olivé

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

F. Xavier Gómez-Olivé holds a PhD in public health from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. As a postdoctoral fellow, he continued his work on the link between HIV and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the elderly. His research aimed to give insight into how health policies and interventions can effectively respond to the demands of an aging population that has been and will continue to be profoundly affected by these…

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Angelina Grigoryeva

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Angelina Grigoryeva is a sociologist whose research lies at the intersection of inequality and stratification, social demography, and economic sociology. She holds a PhD in sociology with a certificate in demography from Princeton University. Her research examines household economic lives in the context of large-scale socio-economic transformations, with the focus on both between- and within-household differences. In her prior work, she examined the gender division of elder care among adult…

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Anna Grummon

Former Bell Fellow

HCPDS

Anna Grummon is a behavioral scientist who studies how nutrition policies affect what we eat and how healthy we are. She holds a PhD and MSPH in health behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation integrated randomized experiments with mathematical modeling to examine whether health warning labels cause consumers to buy fewer sugary drinks, and whether changes in consumer behavior could lead to improved population…

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