External Affiliate Claus Pörtner (Seattle University) recently published an article in BMJ Global Health titled, “Economic shocks and mental health in Bangladesh.” Pörtner and co-authors used nationally representative panel data over two waves and applied individual fixed effects to estimate the impact of economic shocks on mental health outcomes. Of the 7900 individuals surveyed, more than 16% experienced depression, 6.5% experienced anxiety and 5% experienced both. Economic shocks significantly increased depression and anxiety. Individuals experiencing multiple types of shocks had nearly double the risk of reporting either mental health disorder compared with those facing a single shock. These impacts persisted for 6–12 months post-shock. Adverse mental health effects were concentrated among individuals without coping mechanisms, such as use of savings, credit or support from friends and family, while education appeared protective.
PAA 2026: Pre-Register by February 4 and Volunteer to Serve as Chair or Discussant
PAA looks forward to seeing you May 6-9 in St. Louis, Missouri!
All accepted presenters will be required to pre-register for the conference by February 4, 2026 to secure spot on the program. The program and schedule will not be available until mid-February. Registration is now open for you to secure your spot at PAA 2026. See all details and register here.
PAA is looking for volunteers to be chairs and discussants for some additional PAA sessions at the 2026 annual meeting. Selections will be made on a first come, first serve basis. Sign up here.
Please note the guidelines below:
- Please feel free to make several selections, but note that you will only be assigned one role unless there is still a need for additional chairs and discussants after all volunteers have been given a role.
- You cannot have more than four roles total at the PAA 2026 meeting, with two as a presenter.
- If you are presenting or serving in other roles already, MiraSmart will resolve any possible conflicts before the session schedule is finalized.
- You must be pre-registered for the conference to serve in these roles.
- Guidelines for these roles will be sent out approximately one month before the start of the conference
CACHE Webinar: CHIRPS and CHIRTS datasets – Shraddhanand Shukla (02/05/26)
The virtual Center on Aging, Health, and Environment (CACHE) is hosting a webinar, titled “Climate Hazard Center’s rainfall (CHIRPS) and temperature (CHIRTS) datasets: Everything you want to know about these valuable resources” delivered by Dr. Shraddhanand Shukla (UCSB). Join CACHE on February 5, at 2 pm PT. Register in advance to join! Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email containing the password required to join the seminar.
*New* ASA International Migration Webinar: Navigating Methodological & Ethical Challenges in Migration Research (02/06/26)
What are some of the key risks and challenges facing migration researchers in our current political climate? How do we protect our interlocutors and ourselves? Join the panelists for a discussion on methodology and ethics in contemporary migration research.
When: Friday, February 6 at 2 PM EST / 11 AM PST
Speakers: Nilda Flores-Gonzalez (Arizona State University); Heba Gowayed (CUNY Hunter College/Graduate Center); Ariela Schachter (Washington University in St. Louis)
Hosted by: ASA International Migration Section
INVEST Conference 2026 – Building Equal Societies: From Scientific Findings to Societal Transformation (02/09/26)
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. Whether your work focuses on individuals, families, communities or systems, this is a place where your findings can spark meaningful conversations and help shape solutions for more equal societies.
Themes:
- Citizenship and resilience
- Demographic research
- Implementation
- Individual and societal consequences of crises and disasters
- Labour markets and economic well-being
- Mental health and mental disorders
- Methodological approaches and openings
- Migration and integration
- Peer relations and youth vulnerabilities
- Publich health and social care
- Social experiments and interventions
- Social inequality
- Social well-being and quality of life
- Sociogenetic research
- Urban and housing studies
- Other related theme
This is your opportunity to:
- Present your research to an international scientific audience and join a community working at the intersection of research and real-world impact.
- Meet leading scholars, including keynote speakers Kathryn Paige Harden and Philip N. Cohen.
- Exchange ideas across disciplines and build new collaborations that advance both science and society.
Keynote speakers:
- Kathryn Paige Harden, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, Director of the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project. She is internationally recognized for her pioneering work on genetics, behavior, and social inequality
- Philip Cohen, Professor of sociology and a demographer at the University of Maryland. He is a leading scholar of family sociology, inequality, and social change and is also known for his influential work in public sociology and for advocating open, transparent, and impactful research communication.
Abstract Submission Guidelines: For more information, click here.
- Presentation format: individual oral presentation
- Submission language: English
- Presentations must be held in English
- Please double-check all author information before submitting
- Authors are solely responsible for the scientific and ethical content
- No submission fees
- Abstracts cannot be modified after the submission deadline
- Maximum legnth of presentation title: 200 characters incl. spaces
- Maximum length of abstract: 2000 characters incl. spaces
- Last submission date: 9th Feb 2026
*New* ICONICS Webinar on Launching the Scenario Evolution Process (02/12/26)
The International Committee On New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS) invites you to join a webinar on 12 February 2026, Launching the Scenario Evolution Process. This webinar will introduce the Scenario Evolution Process (SEP) and provide information on how to engage with the development of the next generation of community scenarios. The webinar will be recorded for those unable to attend and posted to the ICONICS website. An additional Q&A session will also be held the first week of March.
To register for the webinar and hear more about options of staying engaged in the evolution process going forward use this link.
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) have provided a widely adopted foundation for climate-centric research, yet their design limits applicability in the context of today’s interconnected global challenges. To address these limitations, the ICONICS has initiated SEP: a community-led initiative to critically reassess, adapt, and potentially transform the SSPs to a more fit-for-purpose framework that supports research on resilient, equitable, and sustainable development and develop socioeconomic scenarios that have applicability beyond the climate change domain.
Speakers will provide detail on the motivation, vision and process for SEP, with information on several concordant activities:
- A multi-stage survey to both scenario producers, as well as users of scenario-based information. This engagement aims to broaden perspectives, incorporate feedback from a broad audience, and reduce Global North bias.
- An academic literature exchange, incorporating recommendations towards an updated scenario framework.
- A series of workshops and conference sessions to engage with a diverse range of communities
Global Call for Ideas: Templeton World Charity Foundation (02/13/26)
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.
Recognizing that these discoveries may come from diverse sources we seek ideas that might illuminate and point to discoveries in three of our core areas of interest:
- the fundamental processes, structures and constituents of the natural world
- what it is to be human, as well as the various ways human beings can progress spiritually through their understanding and pursuit of virtues such as love, creativity, gratitude, forgiveness, spirituality, connection, and other positive concepts.
- the nature of transcendent divinity and human responses to it.
Central to TWCF’s mission is our commitment to meaning, purpose, and truth as realities that can be known and pursued. TWCF can fund curiosity-driven research on big questions that expand the horizons of humanity’s perspectives, without necessarily expecting definitive answers. We welcome bold ideas that have potential to generate new insights, even if those ideas may be seen as too risky or contrarian by other funders.
As well as discovery-focused research, we are also open to ideas for more applied programs in specific topics (see Core Funding Areas) that will lead to long-term future benefits for humanity.
Our current priorities and funded projects exemplify, but do not limit, the range and types of topics that we are interested in. A full description of the scope of our work can also be found in the descriptions of our Core Funding Areas (see section below). We invite ideas from a wide range of disciplines, spanning the natural and social sciences, as well as humanities like philosophy and theology. Interdisciplinary ideas that integrate insights from different perspectives through open-minded inquiry are strongly encouraged.
Eligibility:
Faculty & PIs
Call for Contributions: The ‘Good Life’ Data Challenge (02/15/26)
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 invite researchers from across the social sciences to submit a theory-driven proposal (600-800 words) by February 15, 2026, using the online form provided in the call. Proposals may use any variables from the 1999-2025 waves of the SHP to predict responses to three new items that are currently fielded in the 2025 wave (data will only become available in 2026), in which respondents provide retrospective assessments of happiness, meaning, and psychological richness.
Selected teams will:
- Be invited in spring 2026 to preregister their analysis plans and subsequently conduct their analyses once the 2025 SHP data are released in summer 2026.
- Co-author a collective publication coordinated by the LIVES Centre, to be submitted to a leading international journal.
- Receive CHF 1,000 per team upon submission of the final report.
Please consult the call for the timeline, selection criteria, and links to SHP documentation.
Hajat Quoted on Health Effects of Air Pollution in The South Seattle Emerald
CSDE Affiliate Anjum Hajat (Epidemiology, CSDE Development Core Director) was quoted by The South Seattle Emerald on an article concerning air pollution in the Duwamish Valley. Community organizers are opposing a newly approved permit that allows a South End cement manufacturing plant to burn more tires for fuel. Hajat discussed the health risks of air pollution and noted that residents of the Duwamish Valley, where 65% of residents are people of color and household incomes are among the lowest in the city, face multiple sources of air pollution.
Occupations, Careers, and Opportunity: A Structural Approach to Studying Economic Mobility over the Life Course – Michael Schultz
We are looking forward to hosting Michael Schultz from the University of Washington on Friday, February 6th in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative and the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance
A person’s work life is a major feature of the middle of the life course. A sociological approach focuses on how wages and other job rewards are tied to workers obtaining discrete positions. Consequently, the movement of workers between jobs and the work contexts of those jobs are primary explanations for inequality over the life course. The large number of possible transitions between jobs presents theoretical and methodological challenges. In this talk, I draw on several of my recent and ongoing research projects that use the 500 Census occupations to identify structural positions in the labor market and analyze occupational and wage mobility over the life course. Occupations are a meso-level unit of analysis that facilitates studying institutional job ladders, career continuity/discontinuity across job transitions, and changes in the availability and access to jobs associated with opportunity.
Michael Schultz is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Schultz is a quantitative sociologist and social demographer who studies economic mobility, social policy, and workers’ careers. He uses a structural inequality approach that focuses on how institutions, like education systems, job ladders, and welfare state programs shape worker mobility by race, gender, and class. Schultz specializes in telling stories with data to provide insight into how workers and households navigate opportunities and constraints to advance their careers and gain economic security. Schultz is the PI on an NSF grant studying the job ladders in the STEM Skilled Technical Workforce and on a Strada Foundation grant investigating the occupational and wage outcomes of WA postsecondary school leavers. To date, his research is published in American Sociological Review, the Russell Sage Foundation Journal for the Social Sciences, Social Science Research, and Equitable Growth’s working paper series.