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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

*New* Migrating Mariners of the African Diaspora: Race, Labor, and Waterways in the 19th Century – Matthew Randolph (02/27/26)

On February 27, CSDE Affiliate Matthew Randolph (American Ethnic Studies) will present his work on “Migrating Mariners of the African Diaspora: Race, Labor, and Waterways in the 19th Century”, as part of the 2026 Black History Month Speaker Series, hosted by the Paul G. Allen School. There are two opportunities to hear this work: an intimate discussion and lunch between 10:30 – 11:30 AM, and a larger-format talk from 12 – 1 PM.  RSVP here to join either event, held in the Bill & Melinda Gates Commons, Room 691, Paul G. Allen Building.

*New* Call for Proposals: Environmental Research Letters Focus Issue on “Initial and Enduring Environmental Consequences of Armed Conflict” (02/28/26)

Full information on scope, guest editors, and submission process at: https://iopscience.iop.org/collections/erl-251125-1010. Please email Jamon Van Den jamon.vandenhoek@oregonstate.edu with any questions.
Recent years have seen a sharp rise in armed conflicts worldwide with some estimates pointing to a roughly 25% increase in conflict events each year since 2020, alongside a growing population directly affected by violence. Here, we use ’armed conflict’ to refer to situations in which organized groups, including governments, use weapons against one another. Though widespread, the environmental toll of armed conflict remains poorly understood in part because the impacts of armed conflict on ecological, human-environment, and climatic processes may manifest in different ways at different times. Examples such as burned agricultural fields in eastern Ukraine, damage to urban and peri-urban areas in the Gaza Strip, and cleared woodlands in Tigray may be evident almost immediately through first-hand accounts and detectable in satellite images collected thereafter.
But what of the long-term impacts on soil health, air quality, and carbon emissions, or changes in land and resource management decisions in response to armed conflict? These indirect environmental consequences are far more difficult to measure and attribute since they manifest over longer timespans, farther away from the conflict, and may result from a complex interplay of conflict dynamics, governance shifts, and other stressors such as climate variability. Nonetheless, their inclusion is essential for a full accounting of the environmental consequences of armed conflict, both to inform accountability and reparations processes, to guide long-term recovery and peacebuilding, and to ensure that conflict-affected regions are not left behind in meeting global climate and sustainability goals.
Rather than considering only the immediate or acute environmental impacts of armed conflicts, this focus issue seeks research contributions that examine the broader spectrum of environmental consequences, including indirect effects that unfold over seasons or years and extend across diffuse geographies. We are particularly interested in research that integrates conflict dynamics into analyses of environmental outcomes, and that employs innovative combinations of Earth observation, geospatial data, and qualitative insights to capture the plurality of conflict consequences at different temporal and spatial scales. Such approaches can illuminate how armed conflict processes, shaped by both deliberate and involuntary decisions, translate into specific environmental impacts.
Example topics include:
  • Examining linkages across urban, peri-urban, and rural environmental impacts of war
  • Presenting novel approaches for assessing soil contamination and degradation in conflict settings
  • Building causal frameworks linking conflict processes and environmental outcomes
  • Multi-sensor monitoring of carbon emissions and atmospheric pollution arising from armed conflicts
  • Tracking environmental impacts over the arc of war preparations, warfare, and post-war stages
  • Assessing livelihood impacts of legacies of war including mining, unexploded ordnance, and toxic pollution
  • Innovating methods for validating remotely detected environmental impacts
  • Tracing the impacts of armed conflict on telecoupled land use systems and cross-border resource flows
  • Integrating empirical environmental datasets to guide post-conflict environmental peacebuilding
  • Disentangling impacts of war, aid, and climate change on food insecurity in conflict and displacement settings
  • Counter-intuitive cases of conflict-induced improvements in ecosystem services

*New* Summer Research Training Institute for American Indian and Alaska Native (Al/AN) Health Professionals and Students (02/27/26)

The Northwest Native American Research Center for Health” (NW NARCH) invites applications by February 27 for travel scholarships to attend the Summer Research Training Institute (SRTI) for American Indian and Alaska Native (Al/AN) Health Professionals and Students. The SRTI is a program designed for health professionals and students interested in Native health. Each week offers different, short skill-building courses in research methods, program evaluation, and project implementation. Learn more here.

The goal of the NW NARCH is to improve tribal health by increasing the number of American Indian and Alaska Native (Al/ AN) people who are engaged in biomedical and social science research and who can bring the benefits of academic research into their communities. The Summer Research Training Institute (SRTI) is just one of many NW NARCH programs designed to improve your research skills.

 

Call for Papers: 13th Annual International Conference on Demography and Population Studies (02/24/26)

The Anthropology & Demography Unit (Head: Dr. Barbara Zagaglia, Associate Professor, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy) of the Athens Institute will hold its 13th Annual International Conference on Demography and Population Studies, 15-19 June 2026, Athens, Greece.  The deadline for abstract submissions is February 24, 2026. All information at: https://www.atiner.gr/demography.

The aim of the conference is to bring together academics and researchers from all areas of Demography and Population Studies and other related disciplines. You may participate as presenter of one paper, chair of a session or observer. The conference is sponsored by the Athens Journal of Demography & Anthropology and the Athens Journal of Social Sciences.

 

The Journey into Adulthood in Uncertain Times – Robert Crosnoe

Follow this link to sign up for a 1:1 meeting with Dr. Crosnoe during their visit on February 27th

We look forward to welcoming Robert Crosnoe from the University of Texas at Austin on Friday, February 27th, in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative.

This presentation will provide an overview of a new book, The Journey into Adulthood in Uncertain Times, co-authored with Shannon Cavanagh and published in 2025 by Russell Sage.  It tackles some key questions of interests to population scientists, developmental scientists, and the public, including: Is the lengthening span of time that young people in the U.S. take to transition into adult roles creating a new generation of “adultolescents”? How has the decades-long reshaping of this critical period of life been complicated by specific historical crises? The answers to these questions come from What does this interplay between long-term trends and short-term shocks mean for the cycle of inequality across American generations? The answers come from integrated analyses of multiple sources of population and qualitative data that consider how: 1) key aspects of socioeconomic attainment, family-building, and socioemotional development among young adults (aged 18-26) have evolved since the early 1970s with a particular focus on the potential disruption of the Great Recession of the 2000s; 2) young adults in recent cohorts since the 1990s have taken trajectories though these three domains as they moved from their late teens through the mid-twenties; 3) how young adults have made sense of and gained meaning from the ups and downs of coming of age during the modern era; and 4) how young adults’ pathways through this stage of life emerged from the families and communities in which they were born and grew up over many years. The resulting story is about gradual versus revolutionary change in the ways that young people become adults, one that grounds the growing social panic about young adults today in a more complicated but less alarming reality.

Robert Crosnoe is the Rapoport Centennial Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also is a faculty member in the Population Research Center and Department of Psychology and formerly served as Senior Associate Dean of Liberal Arts and Chair of Sociology.  He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Dr. Crosnoe’s mixed methods research explores the education, health, and social development of children, adolescents, and young adults and how they are stratified by their families’ socioeconomic circumstances and migration histories.  This work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, National Institute of Justice, William T. Grant Foundation, and Foundation for Child Development.  A few of his book titles are Mexican Roots, American Schools: Helping Mexican Immigrant Children Succeed (Stanford University Press), Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education (Cambridge University Press), Debating Early Child Care: The Relationship between Developmental Science and the Media (Cambridge University Press with Tama Leventhal), and Families Now: Diversity, Demography, and Development (Macmillan). Dr. Crosnoe has been or is President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Chair of multiple sections of the American Sociological Association, Deputy Editor of Journal of Marriage and Family and Demography, Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Population Reference Bureau, and a member of the AP Higher Education Advisory Council for the College Board.

UW Civic Health Initiative (02/25/26)

Organization: UW Civic Health Initiative
Award amount: $2,000-$25,000
Sponsor deadline: 02/06/2026
Description:  The University of Washington Civic Health Initiative has released a funding call for three different categories of small grants. These grant programs are designed to foster new collaborations and innovations that strengthen civic health and democratic institutions nationwide. Innovations proposed for funding to these grant programs must align with one or more of the areas of focus for the Initiative’s work. Applications for all three programs are due on Friday, February 6, 2026.
More information: 
Teaching and curriculum awards
The purpose of this funding mechanism is to support UW faculty members who have innovative proposals that approach civic health, civic engagement and democracy through new curricular perspectives, methods and activities. The Initiative’s interests are broad in scope, so applications can propose projects with a range of foci. These foci include, but are not limited to, revising a course, creating an interactive learning activity, designing a student experience and so forth. Awards of up to $2,000 each are available.
Research awards
The purpose of this grant is to support faculty members and PI-eligible research staff to develop preliminary data or proof-of-concept needed to pursue follow-on funding or additional concept development to scale one’s efforts. Research projects should seek to catalyze new lines of inquiry and may include, but not be limited to, qualitative or qualitative empirical work, data analysis, evidence synthesis, comparative study, and so forth. Awards of up to $25,000 each are available.
Graduate student and postdoctoral scholar research awards
The purpose of this category of funding is to support UW graduate and postdoctoral researchers who are seeking to generate new knowledge that strengthens civic health, democracy and the structures that support it. The grants can fund research for dissertations, thesis field work or the student’s own topic of research completed under the supervision of a faculty advisor, mentor or principal investigator. Awards of up to $2,000 each are available.
Eligibility:
Faculty & PIs