In a new article published in Frontiers in Psychology, CSDE Affiliate Jing Xu (Anthropology) and co-authors surveyed 303 parents and guardians from BaYaka and Bandongo communities in the Republic of the Congo, Scots in Tayside, United Kingdom, and Chinese Americans in the Greater Seattle Area to examine parental perspectives on children’s social learning. Across all four cultures, parents consistently reported that children should learn from adults through imitation and teaching, but from peers through collaboration. BaYaka and Bandongo parents more often said children should learn tasks, while Scottish and Chinese American parents focused on qualities and values. The findings reveal cross-cultural regularities in social learning mechanisms alongside systematic differences in content, underscoring the importance of cultural context in studying how, what, and from whom children learn.

This month, CSDE Affiliate Gabriella Levy (Political Science) received a Royalty Research Fund Award to help support data collection in Colombia for her in-progress book project titled. “Debates About War Crimes: The Promotion of Inflammatory & Reconciliatory Attitudes Toward Civilian Targeting.” In this book, Dr. Levy considers why regular people continue to support armed actors long after information emerges that such actors have engaged in wartime civilian targeting. Dr. Levy focuses on how armed group propaganda campaigns, and other elite political messages affect public opinion about violence against civilians and its perpetrators. Congratulations Dr. Levy on receiving your award and continuing your important work!

Recently, CSDE Affiliate Karen T Chen (Urban Design and Planning and Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences) received a Royalty Research Fund Award to help support a pilot project that examines how extreme heat, daily mobility, and urban environments interact to shape stress responses across Washington State. Drawing on large-scale geospatial and behavioral data, the study seeks to identify communities most vulnerable to heat-related stress and the contextual factors that may amplify or mitigate these effects. Findings will generate evidence to inform equitable, climate-responsive urban planning strategies as Washington prepares to add one million new homes by 2044 under Housing Bill 1110—helping ensure that future growth supports resilience and well-being. Congratulations Dr. Chen on receiving your award and starting this important work!

Springer recently released a new textbook, Mathematical Demography: Theory and Modeling, written by CSDE External Affiliate Arni Rao (Medical College of Georgia). This text is uniquely designed to provide a clear and rigorous introduction to both mathematical and stochastic modeling and theory of demography with applications through a unified approach. It has been prepared with the hope that it will serve as a useful and accessible textbook. The structure is well-suited for a one-semester course, particularly at the MS and PhD levels, and draws on Rao's 25 years of teaching and research experience in the US, India, and Oxford, England.

CSDE External Affiliate and CSDE Alum Amy Spring (Georgia State), along with Federico Benassi, will edit a special of the Journal of Population Research and they invite contributions from population scholars—including demographers, population geographers and regional scientists—interested in the use of demography as a tool to inform territorial policies and regional planning. This special issue, “Place-based Demography for Regional Planning” welcomes a wide range of topics, including but not limited to depopulation, population aging, mobility and residential segregation, and population projections. Submissions may refer to different empirical contexts and territorial scales, and may adopt methodological, applied or theoretical perspectives.

This workshop aims to introduce basic tools and functions of R for reading, management and examining datasets. Attendees are assumed to have little to no experience with R

• Instructor: Alireza Aminkhaki, CSSCR Consultant
• Date:  Tuesday, July 7, 2026
• Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
• Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
• Register here.

The UW has issued new guidance on managing international research collaborations that might yield security concerns and require appropriate diligence.  Faculty, staff, postdocs, and students should familiarize themselves with University research security policies and requirements and exercise appropriate diligence when participating in international collaborations, professional activities, and scholarly exchanges.

CACHE will be at the GSA 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting, November 4 – 7 in National Harbor, MD, and is organizing a symposium “Pushing the Boundaries on Aging-Climate Topics and Methodologies”. To learn more about the GSA and to connect with leaders in aging and gerontology, find out more here. This year’s theme: “Reinforcing Resilience in Aging Science, Research and Education.”

NIH just released three Parent Announcements for R25 Education Grants, closing May 29, 2029.

• NIH Research Education Program – Courses, Curriculum & Methods (Parent R25 – Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
• NIH Research Educational Program – Mentoring Activities & Networks (Parent R25/UE5 – Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
• NIH Research Education Program – Research Experiences (Parent R25 – Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Education Program supports research education activities in the mission areas of the NIH.

The EMERGE Initiative seeks to support public data advocates in upholding the principles of transparency and evidence-based governance through advancing access to reliable, publicly accessible data. The work of our community serves as a crucial resource for state administrators, researchers, policymakers, journalists, and the American public.  As a starting point, the project team conducted a thorough review of how emerging data gaps are impacting users of public data and identified steps to help the community navigate some of the short-term challenges.

The Office Of Naval Research (ONR) seeks proposal under the ONR Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education and Workforce Program, due June 30, 2026 at 2 PM PT. STEM education programs and activities are defined as formal or informal education primarily focused on physical and natural sciences, technology, engineering, social sciences, and mathematics (including environmental science education or stewardship).

Funding Available: The funded amount and period of performance of each proposal selected for award may vary depending on the technology area and the technical approach to be pursued by the offeror selected.

PAA is hosting Government & Public Affairs Virtual Office Hours on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 at
9 AM PT / 12 PM ET. During this off-the-record event, Mary Jo Mitchell, PAA/APC Director of Government Affairs will give a brief update about what is happening at the federal level of interest to the population sciences. Then you will be able to ask questions and engage with your colleagues.

This series is for PAA Members only.

Studies in Family Planning is calling for abstract submissions for a special issue on “Rethinking Contraceptive Futures,” by June 30, 2026. This call for abstracts invites contributions that broaden and challenge traditional understandings of contraceptive use, access, and meaning. Contributions may engage explicitly with family planning debates but should foreground contraceptive practices and their evolving meanings within broader social and demographic paradigms. We seek papers that illuminate contraceptive practices as culturally, politically, and  technologically embedded, and that situate contraception within the wider conversations that shape people’s lives. We welcome empirical (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods), theoretical, methodological, and policy-oriented contributions from low- and middle-income (LMIC) and high-income (HIC) settings. Comparative and cross-context analyses are especially encouraged.

This workshop will cover some of R’s useful tools for data management and exploration. Most of class will be devoted to learning Hadley Wickham’s excellent “tidyr” and “dplyr” packages. Attendees are assumed to have basic familiarity with R/RStudio.

• Instructor:  Victoria Sass, CSSCR Consultant
• Date:  Thursday, July 9, 2026
• Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
• Location: Savery 117 (Big Lab)
• Register here.

A good rule of thumb in data wrangling and programming is: if you find yourself copying and pasting a block of code more than twice, it’s time to stop and think about a more efficient approach. This course will introduce functional programming and other techniques to reduce redundancy and enhance the computational efficiency of your R code. We will cover practical skills frequently used in data projects, such as manipulating multiple columns, writing anonymous functions, using map(), nesting dataframes within tibbles, and running multiple regressions and comparing them results simultaneously. Attendees are expected to have basic familiarity with data wrangling using dplyr in R.

• Instructor: Brian Leung, CSSCR Consultant
• Date: Monday, July 20, 2026
• Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
• Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
• Register here.

The preliminary program for this year’s Data-Intensive Research Conference is now available. Registration is open for both virtual and in-person participation through July 3; there is no registration fee to attend, but space is limited. Applications for the pre-conference workshop on IPUMS Full Count Census Data are open through April 1.

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This workshop introduces core concepts and tools for working with spatial data in Python, providing overview for geospatial data models, vector analysis with Shapely/GeoPandas, and raster processing with Rasterio/GDAL. Participants are encouraged to take an introductory Python course but not required.

• Instructor: Yuying Xie, CSSCR Consultant
• Date:  Monday, Jul 27, 2026
• Time: 1:30pm – 2:50pm
• Location: Savery 117 (Big Lab)
• Register here.

Codex is OpenAI’s coding agent, a software that has access to your project’s files and can generate code, reorganize your directories, and make slides and reports. This workshop introduces a workflow with the codex app. Note: although Codex is currently available to those with a free ChatGPT subscription, it is likely that on the date of the workshop it will require a $20/month level plan. This workshop is great for you if you have already accessed or plan to access a “Plus” level subscription.

• Instructor: Tynan Challenor, CSSCR Consultant
• Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2026
• Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
• Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
• Register here.

This workshop provides a practical introduction to working in ATLAS.ti, by marrying the fundamentals of the qualitative methodology with the functionality of this program. This will include conceptualizing and creating quotations, codes, memos, and comments followed by establishing thematic relationships through systematic analysis. The hands-on course assumes no familiarity with Atlas.ti, however, requires CSDE Terminal Server student access (sign up here with UWNetID).

• Instructor: Baishakhi Basu, CSSCR Consultant
• Date:  Friday, Jul 31, 2026
• Time: 3:00pm – 4:20pm
• Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
• Register here.

The Northwestern Main and Advanced Causal Inference Workshop will hold its 15th annual meeting on Research Design for Causal Inference at Northwestern Law School in Chicago, IL. The  main workshop takes place Monday – Friday, August 3-7,  and the advanced workshop follows, Monday – Wednesday, August 10-12, with an optional machine learning primer on Sunday afternoon, August 9.

The Spencer Foundation seeks proposals for Vision Grants up to $75,000 by August 12, 2026. The Vision Grant program provides scholars and collaborators with the time, space, resources, and support to plan a large-scale study or program of research: geared toward real-world impact to make education systems more equitable; drawing on research across disciplines and methods; and developed through meaningful and equitable collaboration with practitioners, policymakers, communities, and other partners; and focused on transforming educational systems.

IUSSP and its co-organizes invite papers for a workshop focused on “Aftermath of a Pandemic: Changes in Mortality and Health.” Post-pandemic periods can reveal or amplify existing health inequalities, and the effects of pandemics often extend beyond the acute phase of infection, influencing long-term patterns of mortality and overall population health. This workshop will focus on these poorly understood effects.

The workshop will be hosted by the Oslo Metropolitan University on January 28-29, 2027.

Studies in Family Planning is calling for submission for a special issue on “Pandemic and Epidemic Impacts on Reproduction, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Family Dynamics: Longer-Term Consequences and Cross-Crisis Perspectives,” due September 15, 2026. The special issue aims to broaden the field by situating COVID-19 within a broader landscape of pandemics and epidemics with demonstrable implications for reproduction, family life, and SRHR. In addition to longer-term analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic, we invite research that explicitly engages with other health crises—such as the Zika epidemic or the mpox (monkeypox) outbreak—that have had well-documented sexual and reproductive health consequences. Please submit to wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/SIFP. 

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood seeks LOIs by September 30, 2026. 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.

People who have contact with the criminal justice system experience disproportionate social and health disadvantage both prior to and following their justice involvement, compared to the broader community. Achieving equity in areas such as health, housing, and education among people with justice system involvement should be a global priority. Simultaneously, the need to reduce offending and recidivism is central to improving public safety, strengthening justice system legitimacy, and reducing future victimisation.

The IUSSP Early Career Awards aim to honour outstanding contributions to the broad field of population studies by early career scholars in different world regions and boost the global visibility of their achievements. Nominate colleagues by November 1, 2026. Nominees must have received their PhD within the last seven years and be IUSSP members. For more information about the Award and the nomination procedure and to fill out the application form, please go to IUSSP Early Career Awards.

In partnership with the Center for Aging and Policy Studies and Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University, The Milbank Quarterly will publish a special issue to advance knowledge on the connections between policies and population health in a changing U.S. context. The special issue seeks empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions on the topic. Of particular interest are papers that link changes and variation in policy contexts to health outcomes, identify mechanisms linking policies to outcomes, or propose new ways to measure and conceptualize policy contexts for health research. See the call for papers for more information.

Demographic Research invites contributions to the Special Collection on Kinship Demography: Structures, Dynamics, and Inequalities in the journal Demographic Research, organized by Ashton Verdery, Bussarawan Puk Teerawichitchainan, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, and Elena Maria Pojman. Submissions to this collection are possible from June 15, 2026 until December 15, 2026. Please find more information on the collection’s description and goals as well as on submission procedures here.

Call for Papers for the Special Collection “Measuring Population Health in the Era of Climate Change” in Population Health Metrics: The collection focuses on how climate change is reshaping population health and on methodological and empirical advances to measure these impacts. Submissions due February 26, 2027.