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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Okonek and Wakefield Author Article on a Parametric Survival Model for Child Mortality 

CSDE External Affiliate Taylor Okonek (Macalester College), CSDE Affiliate and Executive Committee Member Jon Wakefield (Statistics and Biostatistics), and co-author Katie Wilson just published an article in Demographic Research, titled “A parametric survival model for child mortality using complex survey data.” Modern demographic methods for estimating a full mortality schedule for children have been developed for countries with good vital registration and reliable census data but perform poorly in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Okonek, Wilson, and Wakefield propose a parametric, survey-weighted (pseudo-likelihood) approach and apply it to survey data from four countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Raftery Publishes Article on Climate Change Prospects and Speaks to UW News

CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery (Statistics) spoke to UW News to share insights from a recent paper, “Mitigation efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and meet the Paris Agreement have been offset by economic growth,” published in Communications Earth & Environment. Raftery and co-authors used data from 2015–2024 to probabilistically assess the changes in climate change prospects associated with emissions since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015. Carbon intensity declined (i.e., improved) substantially over that period, but overall carbon emissions rose, due to the rapid rise in world GDP, which more than canceled out the progress made. The chance of staying below 2 °C remained low, at 17%. However, the chance of the most catastrophic climate change, above 3 °C, has gone down substantially, from 26% to 9%. Read more.

*New* CSDE Computational Demography Working Group (CDWG): Lauren Woyczynski and Jessica Godwin (11/12/25)

When: November 12, 2025 from 10 – 11 am

Where: Raitt 223 and on Zoom

On November 12, CSDE’s Computational Demography Working Group will host CSDE Trainee Lauren Woyczynski (Sociology) and CSDE Staff Jessica Godwin (Statistical Demographer & Training Director).

The University of Washington Elections Database (UWED) project, led by CSDE Affiliate Scott Allard (Public Policy & Management) and CSDE External Affiliate Jake Grumbach (Berkeley), offers publicly available data on ballots, registered voters, and voting-age population at the precinct level in Washington from with differing temporal availability from 2007-2024. Funded by the state legislature, the UWED team standardizes these data across time and data type and adds enhancements using address geocoding and estimates of racial demographics using BISG. In this talk, CSDE Research Scientist Jessica Godwin and CSDE Trainee Lauren Woyczynski (Sociology) will discuss the data processing pipeline developed to address several pain points in the processing of UWED data, many of which are common to large-scale and heterogenous administrative data.

Lauren Woyczynski is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington. She also holds a Masters’ in Public Health from UW focused on Health Metrics and Evaluation. She has worked as a Data Scientist on the UW Elections Database since 2023. Her research interests span social demography, structural determinants of health, and computational methods. Her current research focuses on health disparities related to mass incarceration in the United States.

Jessica Godwin is a Statistical Demographer and the Training Director for the Demographic Methods Certificate Program with CSDE. In her role as a Statistical Demographer, she will support the research of CSDE Affiliates and Trainees via consulting and the organization and facilitation of CSDE Workshops. Dr. Godwin received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington in 2021 and also completed CSDE’s Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods. She was also the recipient of two CSDE fellowships, one from NICHD and one from the Shanahan Endowment. Her dissertation work examined how to best estimate child mortality from various sources and to improve upon national and subnational estimates in places with sparse data. As part of that effort, she led a study with CSDE Affiliate Jon Wakefield published in Statistics in Medicine that developed space-time modeling techniques for subnational child mortality estimates in low and middle-income countries. Subnational estimations of child mortality for 22 countries developed in collaboration with UN IGME can be found at https://childmortality.org/. Her broad research interests are demography, Bayesian spatiotemporal methods, survey statistics, and the places where all of those things overlap. She was born and raised in Alabama and received her M.S. in Statistics at Auburn University. Her thesis, titled “Group lasso for functional logistic regression”, was advised by Nedret Billor. She also received a B.S. in Actuarial Science. To read more about Dr. Godwin, visit her website: https://jlgodwin.github.io/.

Dutch Demography Day 2026: Call for Papers (11/12/25)

The Netherlands Demographic Society (NVD) invites you to join the 18th edition of the Dutch Demography Day on Wednesday, February 4, 2026 in the Academy Building of Utrecht University (Domplein).

At the conference, the most recent findings in the field of population studies will be presented, including family and fertility, migrants and migration, health, mortality and longevity, population ageing, population growth and decline, and urbanization. The scientific programme comprises a Keynote Address, several rounds of parallel sessions and a poster session. All are in English.

Call for Abstracts/Proposals

Abstracts from a wide variety of disciplines, including sociology, economics, health, history and planning, are invited. Abstracts (max 300 words) can be submitted here until Wednesday November 12, 2025. Authors will be informed in December whether their abstract has been accepted for presentation in one of the parallel sessions or for the poster session. Authors who wish to only present and pitch a poster, instead of having an oral presentation in a parallel session, can indicate this preference when submitting an abstract.

You are also invited to come with a proposal for a session, workshop, panel discussion or else. Write us (demografiedag@gmail.com) if you have a proposal (300 words) for a 60- or 90-minute time slot (3 or 4 presentations).

Awards

Two awards will be granted at the Dutch Demography Day:

NIDI-NVD Master Thesis Award 2026

This Award honours the best Master Thesis in Population Studies in the Netherlands. Jointly sponsored by the NVD and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), the Award carries a certificate and a €500 prize. Master theses can be submitted until October 15, 2025 at demografiedag@gmail.com. The rules of play can be found here.

NVD Seed Grant 2025/26

The NVD offers a “Seed Grant” to young researchers (Master and PhD students), to provide extra financial means that will help them in their research project. The grant can be used for, for example, additional data collection, coding or transcription of qualitative interviews, or visiting a conference or workshop to present a paper. Applications can be submitted until  December 5, 2025. For more information, see here.

Registration

Participation is not possible without registering for the conference.
Registration and payment will be possible between November 1, 2025 and January 9, 2026 through this website

CSDE Science Core – Upcoming Workshops

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 coming academic year, CSDE will offer a diverse and exciting set of workshops in a remote format. Students, faculty, staff, and our CSDE community members from outside the University of Washington are all welcome to register for our workshops. Zoom links will be provided upon registration.

You can find our workshop website and register for our Autumn 2025 workshops in the links below. We will be filling in our schedule for Winter & Spring workshops soon, so stay tuned!

Please reach out to CSDE, if you have additional workshops you would like to see offered in the future and we will do our best to accommodate those requests.

 

Autumn Workshops

*New* Indigenous Food Ways & Mental Health: Emma Elliott and Michael Spencer (11/13/25)

Please join the UW Consortium for Global Mental Health and the Population Health Initiative for on Thursday, November 13 from 10 – 11 am PST for Indigenous Food Ways & Mental Health—a conversation between CSDE Affiliate Michael Spencer (Ballmer Endowed Dean and Professor, Social Work)  and Dr. Emma Elliott. They will discuss their research and what they’ve learned about the interconnection of indigenous food ways and total wellbeing, within an indigenous knowledge and theoretical framework that holds profound promise for public health. This is a hybrid event, please register, however you plan to attend.
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Dr. Emma Elliott (Cowichan Tribes) is an assistant professor in the Department of Learning Sciences and Human Development in the College of Education at the University of Washington. She holds both a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and a Master of Social Work in Children, Youth, and Families. The interdisciplinary intersections of her research include culture, learning, and human development; land-based and Indigenous methodologies; and trauma, prevention, and recovery among Indigenous children and youth. By employing a strengths-based approach to healing, Dr. Elliott rigorously engages youth, families, and communities in the development of integrated educational and behavioral health interventions to address social issues. Her research centers ethical frameworks generated by Indigenous and land-based knowledges and practices to create process-centered approaches that illuminate Indigenous pathways toward collective livelihood. Dr. Elliott is currently partnering with members of the Cowichan Tribes to design programming to strengthen the physical, mental, intellectual, and cultural health of the community.
 
Dr. Michael Spencer, is the first Native Hawaiian Dean at the School of Social Work. Spencer is an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, and has served as the co-chair for the Grand Challenges for Social Work in both Close the Health Gap and Eliminate Racism. In 2023, he co-authored Social Work and the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism, a compilation of perspectives from leading researchers on various forms of racism and its impact on racial groups. His research examines health and wellness among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, focusing on interventions that promote health among Native Hawaiians through Indigenous practices and values. His research examines the added benefit of integrating Native Hawaiian traditional healing into primary care in Waimānalo, O’ahu. He also works with colleagues at the University of Hawai’i to promote food security and well-being using backyard aquaponics systems among Native Hawaiians.