Skip to content
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Call for Applications: NextGenPop Undergraduate Program in Population Research (02/05/26)

NextGenPop is an undergraduate program in population research that trains and nurtures the next generation of population scientists. The program includes a 2-week, in-person, on-campus summer experience and subsequent virtual components focused on research and professional development. The University of Minnesota is hosting the summer 2026 program in Minneapolis, MN, from June 7 – 19. Participants receive a $1,000 stipend as well as funds to cover travel and living expenses. Classroom instruction and hands-on applications address contemporary social and policy issues in population research, including health disparities, family change, immigration, and social mobility. For more information, please visit the website and application page.

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

 

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:
  1. the fundamental processes, structures and constituents of the natural world
  2. 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.
  3. 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.