We look forward to welcoming CSDE Affiliates Avanti Adhia and Ali Rowhani-Rahbar from the University of Washington on Friday, January 16 at 12:30 PM in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative. In this panel, Dr. Adhia and Dr. Rowhani-Rahbar will each present research related to preventing violence.

Avanti Adhia (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. The goal of her interdisciplinary research is to prevent intimate partner and sexual violence by (1) understanding the causes and consequences and (2) evaluating the role of laws, policies, and interventions in reducing violence.

Ali Rowhani-Rahbar is the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Professor of Epidemiology, Professor of Pediatrics, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy & Governance, and Director of the Center for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Washington. His research evaluates community-based interventions, social programs, and public policies for their impact on multiple forms of violence, with particular emphasis on preventing firearm-related harm.

CSDE External Affiliate and former CSDE T32 Fellow Delaney Glass (University of Toronto) and co-authors developed a Qualitative Framework for Operationalizing Respondent Sampling (Q-FORS), featured in Social Science and Medicine.  Q-FORS focuses on data adequacy as the pivotal concept for determining a qualitative sample, especially with interviews and focus groups. It is a practical framework applicable across the spectrum of the research life cycle—from proposal writing and data collection to reporting—and is geared towards any researchers using qualitive methods, especially those publishing in medical and health related journals. The authors discuss the utility of this approach by providing two hypothetical case examples based on real-life studies being carried out by the co-authors.

CSDE Affiliate Jing Xu (Anthropology) authored a chapter in a new book titled, Rethinking Childhood in Modern Chinese History. In this chapter, Xu draws on ethnographic records on Chinese children and childhood in the mid twentieth century that reflect three layers of marginality: social margins – ordinary, rural, working-class families in Hong Kong and Taiwan; historiographical margins – ethnographic materials are outside the conventional scope of ‘archival’ history on Chinese childhood; and intellectual margins – children at the periphery of these ethnographies. Xu also presents her rediscovery of a significant yet unpublished fieldnotes archive collected by the late anthropologists Arthur P. Wolf and Margery Wolf between 1958 and 1960 in the world's first systematic, anthropological research on Han Chinese children. In a separate article, Xu draws on these fieldnotes and combines anthropological expertise and various AI technologies to analyze natural observation texts about children’s peer-interactions. Xu transformed raw fieldnotes into a text-as-data pipeline, discovered how ethnographic close-reading and AI technologies can complement and augment each other’s value, and shed light on the similarities and differences in how machines and humans learn and make sense of morality.

UW Today recently featured a profile of CSDE Affiliate Magali Blanco (Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences). Originally posted on DEOHS’s blog, the profile highlights Blanco’s research on how air pollution affects the brain, including her work on a mobile monitoring campaign to gather air pollution data around Seattle using a car outfitted with monitoring instruments and her contributions to a long-running study called Adult Changes in Thought that involves examining biomarkers of cognitive deficit in brains donated after end of life.

Each quarter, CSDE offers 3-5 workshops on data sources, statistical and biomarker methodology, introductions to analysis programs, and more, all given by CSDE staff and faculty affiliates. These workshops can include hands-on training in novel methods and programming, lectures on innovative data sources, and discussions of important issues in research and data collection. Over the course of the academic year, CSDE will offer a diverse and exciting set of workshops, some of which will be offered in person and others remotely via Zoom.

• Survey Methods I: Online Survey Design & Administration with REDCap
  
  • Date & Time: Thursdays Jan 20 and 22 @ 10:00AM–12:00PM
  • Instructors: Matt Dunbar & Paul Litwin
• Survey Methods II: Statistical Analysis of Surveys in R
  
  • Date & Time: Tuesday Jan 27 @ 10:00AM–12:00PM
  • Instructors: Jessica Godwin
• Biomarker Lab Methods I: Immunoassay Principles
  
  • Date: Tuesday, Jan 27 @ 3:00PM-4:00PM
  • Instructor: Tiffany Pan

The Center for Social Science Computation and Research (CSSCR) is offering seven workshops during Winter 2026 Quarter, open to all members of the UW community, whether student, faculty or staff.  See a full list with workshop descriptions and registration links here. 

The call for papers is now open for the upcoming conference “Kinship Structures, Dynamics, and Inequalities,” which will take place on June 8-9, 2026 at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany. The event is organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Kinship Structures, Dynamics and Inequalities; MPIDR; NYU Abu Dhabi; Pennsylvania State University; and the National University of Singapore. Extended abstracts (maximum two pages, PDF) must be submitted via the conference website by January 12.

The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is inviting applications from qualified and highly motivated students for a Summer Research Visit.

The goal of the Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program is to enable discovery by bringing together data scientists and population scientists to work on focused, intensive and collaborative projects of broad societal relevance. For a period of 3 months (June 8 – August 21, 2026) participating students will work in small teams, with support from experienced mentors, towards a common research goal. Apply by January 14, 2026. More information can be obtained here.

Register by January 16 for the 9th Northwest Evolution, Ecology, and Human Behavior Symposium (NWEEHB) to be held February 27 – March 1 @ UW Pack Forest! Open to all!

NWEEHB is an intimate weekend seminar held every other year, bringing together anthropology and archaeology faculty, researchers, and students working broadly in areas of human behavior, evolution, and ecology. The weekend is structured around networking events and in-depth talks with ample time for discussion.

Abstract submissions are now open for the 2026 Data-Intensive Research Conference. The 2026 conference theme is Novel Data Linkages and Innovative Life Course Research. Enriching population data through data linkage creates novel data sources that can shed light on life course processes. Linking across time allows for the examination of transitions and trajectories and linking to contextual information situates the experiences of individuals and populations in their environments. Review the call for proposals and submit an abstract.

• Research Awards – up to $15,000
• Global Learning - Study Abroad/Away - up to $5,000 per year
• Global Learning - Teaching and Curriculum - up to $2,000
• Global Learning - COIL - up to $2,000

Organization: Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood

Award amount: Undisclosed award amount, but past amounts have averaged around $50,000.

Sponsor deadline: 01/31/2026

Description:  The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood is an incubator of promising research and development projects that appear likely to improve the welfare of young children, from infancy through 7 years, in the United States. Welfare is broadly defined to include physical and mental health, safety, nutrition, education, play, familial support, acculturation, societal integration and childcare. (read more)

Proposals for the spring cycle of the UW eScience Institute Data Science & AI Accelerator are due Sunday, February 1 at 11:59 p.m. PT. The Accelerator program pairs eScience Institute data scientists with researchers from any field of study to work on focused, collaborative projects. We highly recommend applicants attend office hours and read our FAQ’s.

NextGenPop is an undergraduate program in population research that trains and nurtures the next generation of population scientists. The program includes a 2-week, in-person, on-campus summer experience and subsequent virtual components focused on research and professional development. The University of Minnesota is hosting the summer 2026 program in Minneapolis, MN, from June 7 – 19. Participants receive a $1,000 stipend as well as funds to cover travel and living expenses. Classroom instruction and hands-on applications address contemporary social and policy issues in population research,

The INVEST Conference 2026 is accepting abstract submissions through February 9, 2026. The conference theme is “Building equal societies: from scientific findings to societal transformation”. INVEST 2026 will take place May 8-9, 2026 in Turku, Finland.

The INVEST Conference is an interdisciplinary meeting point for researchers who are committed to understanding and reducing social inequalities. We warmly invite researchers from all career stages to submit their work and join us in Turku next spring. 

Organization: Templeton World Charity Foundation

Award amount: $5-20 million overall

Sponsor deadline: 02/13/2026

Description:  The Templeton World Charity Foundation is looking for ideas to form the basis of future funding priorities aligned with the Foundation’s purpose. Ideas should be bold and innovative, with the potential to deepen or expand our understanding of ultimate reality and what it means to be human. We seek ideas for rigorous research programs that can impact how we each see the world and our place within it. (read more)

The LIVES Centre (the Swiss Centre of expertise in life course research) is launching the ‘Good Life’ Data Challenge, a large-scale collaboration using the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) to address a key question: What predicts the feeling of having lived a happy, meaningful, and interesting (psychologically rich) life thus far?

The call can be found here. The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2026.

We are inviting you to submit contributions to the Special Collection of Demographic Research on the “De/Re-institutionalization of Asian Families“, organized by Lake Lui, Bussarawan Puk Teerawichitchainan, and Adam Ka-lok Cheung. Submissions to this collection are possible from November 1, 2025 until February 28, 2026. Please find more information on the collection’s description and goals as well as on submission procedures here.

Submit your work for the 2026 Annual IAPHS Conference in Portland, OR!

Theme: Reimagining Population Health Science to Build Trust and Influence​
​Dates: September 29 – October 2, 2026
​Submission Window: December 2, 2025 – March 10, 2026

Join us as we explore how rigorous, relevant science can rebuild trust and drive meaningful change.

Award amount: $200,000

Sponsor deadline: 03/11/2026

Program description: The Russell Sage Foundation’s (RSF) program on Social, Political, and Economic Inequality supports innovative research on the factors that contribute to social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S., and the extent to which those inequalities affect social, political, psychological, and economic outcomes such as educational and labor market access and opportunities, social and economic mobility within and across generations, and civic participation and representation. We seek innovative investigator-initiated research that will expand our understanding of social, (read more)

Award amount: $100,000

Sponsor deadline: 04/01/2026

Program description: The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), in collaboration with the Criminal Justice program at Arnold Ventures (AV) is pleased to announce its first annual grants competition for early-career scholars. Our goal is to cultivate a pipeline of researchers conducting causal research on the criminal justice system. Criminal justice policies and practices include the work of police, courts, jails, prisons, probation and parole, and immigration detention. Proposals must include causal research designs that can reliably isolate the treatment effects of a policy. (read more)

The Vienna Yearbook of Population Research welcomes submissions for a Special Issue on “Demographic perspectives on migration”. Submit your manuscript until May 15, 2026.

The editors invite contributions expanding the state-of-the-art knowledge and methodological approaches across a broad range of migration topics, including trends and spatial patterns, innovative data and methods, socio-economic inequalities, drivers of mobility and immobility, climate-related and crisis-driven migration, links between migration and family or health outcomes.

The December 2025 issue of Population and Development Review, a journal of the Population Council, is now available. Population and Development Review (PDR) is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal that seeks to advance knowledge of the relationships between population and social, economic, and environmental change and provides a forum for discussion of related issues of public policy.

CSDE and the UW Libraries partnered on the purchase of Dewey Data which is a research platform that provides access to third-party datasets across a variety of data categories including foot traffic, construction permits, healthcare, workforce, consumer behavior, and transportation. Follow this link to learn about how to register.

Since the start of our campus subscription in June, several new data sets have been added to the platform. NatureQuant provides access to a NatureScore dataset that estimates the amount and quality of nature and associated environmental conditions at any location in the US, as well as their NatureScore Urban Heat Index. LinkUp offers a dataset of job postings from over 80,000 companies located around the globe.

IPUMS announces the release of the 2024 1-year data from the American Community Survey (ACS) through IPUMS USA and IPUMS NHGIS

IPUMS USA: The 2024 1-year American Community Survey (ACS) and Puerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data are now available via IPUMS USA. This release includes updates to RACE with new detailed codes for Black/African American and White groups.

IPUMS NHGIS: NHGIS has added the 2024 1-Year ACS Summary File, including over 1,400 data tables for geographic areas with 65,000 or more residents.

In Winter 2025, the UW Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences had its first external review since 2002. The review found that, “for departments that have significant numbers of faculty doing quantitative research… CSSS amplifies this strength into a viable reputational and recruiting tool… For programs that are primarily qualitative in nature… CSSS provides unique training opportunities for students and intellectual nourishment for faculty that would otherwise be unavailable.” 

Are you preparing a renewal, resubmission, or upcoming NIH grant application? Resources are now available from an October 2025 virtual workshop by ICPSR designed to help you navigate the requirements of the NIH’s Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy.

The workshop slides cover the essential components of creating an effective DMS Plan and highlight the value of transparent data sharing. You’ll gain insights into the NIH’s data sharing policies, and learn how to de-identify and prepare both restricted- and public-use datafiles.