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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Call for Papers: International Conference on Social Computing 2026 (05/25/26)

The International Conference on Social Computing (ICSC 2026) welcomes submissions and participation for its in-person conference at Nuffield College, University of Oxford on September 2-4, 2026. Paper submissions are due May 25, 2026. ICSC is a long-running research conference that connects computational methods with social science to better understand human behaviour, social networks, and societal change. Held in the United Kingdom for the first time, this conference aims to bring together leading scholars and experts from around the world, thereby fostering a unique environment that promotes cross-cultural exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration. This year’s conference features single- and multi-track sessions dedicated to Digital and Computational Demography.

Core conference areas include (but are in no way limited to):

  • Digital and Computational Demography
  • Social applications of Large Language Models
  • Large-scale social media analytics and intelligence
  • Digital inclusion in the Global South
  • The Science of (Open) Science
  • Applied social computing applications in diverse areas such as health and finance

To access the conference website and to submit: https://icsc-conf.github.io/

 

Call for Abstracts: 2026 International Conference on Aging in the Americas (05/31/26)

The Call for Abstracts is now open for the 2026 International Conference on Aging in the Americas (ICAA). The conference will be held on September 24–25, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois, and will center on the theme Aging and Health in the Americas. We invite abstract submissions from emerging and early-career scholars in the social sciences, particularly those whose work focuses on Latino health and aging. Abstracts are due by May 31, 2026. All emerging scholars will also have the opportunity to participate in a mentored publication program. Submit your abstract here: https://forms.gle/oLd2RovyFZkts42G6
Questions: a.reyes@cornell.edu

CSDE Trainees and Affiliates Receive PAA Poster Awards

Two posters by CSDE Trainees and Affiliates received awards at PAA 2026!

CSDE Trainee Julie Kim (Global Health) was recognized in the Family Demography theme for her poster, “Racial-Ethnic and Gender Inequalities in U.S. Internal Migration.” Kim developed high-resolution estimates of interstate migration by age, sex, race-ethnicity, and state in the United States from 2000–2022 using harmonized survey data within a Bayesian hierarchical framework. The results reveal substantial diversity in migration regimes across racial-ethnic groups, including differences in mobility intensity, age patterns, and destination concentration, highlighting increasingly diverse geographic mobility systems in the United States. Congratulations, Julie!

Brandon Morande (Sociology) led joint work with CSDE Affiliate Amy Hagopian (Health Systems and Population Health), CSDE Affiliate Zack Almquist (Sociology), and Kim Serry, which was recognized in the Data and Methods/Applied Demography category.  The team’s study used street outreach data to investigate where people migrate following encampment clearances and employed relational event models to predict the likelihood of various outcomes. Results suggest that displaced residents remain nearby but reside in smaller camp communities. People appear unlikely to move indoors and instead face high risks of losing contact with service providers. These trends hold regardless of individual demographics, although people with certain health conditions demonstrate stronger place attachments. Congratulations, Brandon, Kim, Dr. Hagopian and Dr. Almquist!

 

Chen, Casey, and Co-authors Show That Heat Metric and Threshold Choice Reshape Population Exposure and Inequality Estimates

UW Postdoc Liutao Chen (Urban Design & Planning) led a paper published in Environmental Research Letters, with CSDE Affiliates Joan Casey (EOHS) and Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen (Urban Design & Planning; EOHS) and co-authors TC Chakraborty and Ching-Hsuan Huang. The team demonstrated how the choice of heat metric and definition of extreme heat days fundamentally alters estimates of population heat exposure and inequality. Using summer 2022 data across the Mediterranean, the study compared four heat metrics under both absolute and relative threshold frameworks.  Critically, the relationship between heat exposure and deprivation reversed depending on the framework: absolute thresholds concentrated exposure in more deprived North Africa and the Middle East, while relative thresholds shifted the burden toward less-deprived European cities.

Arar Contributes to Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies

CSDE Affiliate and Executive Committee Member Rawan Arar (Law, Societies, and Justice) contributed to a new entry to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies on “Refugee Systems.”  A refugee system is both (a) a social phenomenon made up of those connections, and (b) an analytical approach toward understanding displacement that builds upon systems theories, most notably Akin Mabogunje’s elaboration of a migration system. Arar juxtaposes a systems approach with siloed approaches to demonstrate its value for knowledge generation and its implications for uncovering reality and inequalities.

Greiner Examines the Role of Financialization in Sustaining Unsustainable Consumption in Affluent Nations

In a recent article in Environmental Sociology, CSDE Affiliate Patrick Greiner (Sociology) and co-authors explore the relationship between financialization and the material footprint of nations — a measure of the raw material requirements needed to sustain a population’s consumption. Using panel regression and comparative analyses of affluent nations, the study finds that financialization helps uphold unsustainable consumption patterns, and that high-consuming nations tend to exhibit lower rates of economic growth and higher rates of financialization relative to lower-consuming nations in the sample. The authors argue that additional theorizing is needed to characterize the linkages between economic inequality, exploitation, and intensified environmental withdrawals in the world’s wealthiest nations.

State Policy & Politics Database (SPPD) Releases Newly Developed State Policy Index

The newly developed State Policy & Politics Database (SPPD) State Policy Index provides researchers interested in how U.S. state policy contexts predict population health with an index that is longitudinal, interpretable, and valid for population health analyses.
The index is publicly available on ICPSR as part of the State Policy & Politics Database (SPPD) V2. SPPD contains annual data on specific state policies, state policy indices such as the SPPD State Policy Index, and the political ideology of states’ government and residents. The variables are particularly relevant for population health. The SPPD includes several categories of policies, including labor and economic policies (e.g., minimum wage levels, right to work laws), social safety net policies (e.g., earned income tax credits, SNAP), and behavior policies (e.g., tobacco taxes, opioid prescribing). Most measures are available annually from 1980.
A detailed description of the index and the appropriate uses of policy indices is available in Montez, Gutin, and Monnat, “U.S. State Policy Index for Population Heath Analyses” The Milbank Quarterly http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.70085