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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Postdoctoral Researcher, Fertility Stalls in Sub-Saharan Africa

Postdoctoral researcher (2.5 years) on Fertility Stalls in sub-Saharan Africa (UCLouvain, Belgium)

The Centre for Demographic Research of the UCLouvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium – www.uclouvain.be/demo) recruits a Postdoctoral researcher to work on the FNRS-funded STALL project.

 Job description

This project has three broad objectives : documenting stalls in sub-Saharan Africa, describing their demographic dynamics, and identifying their underlying causes. The project will use demographic surveys and censuses from a large number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and will document case studies in selected countries.

The postdoctoral researcher will work in collaboration with the lead researcher. He/she will participate in the following activities:

  • Analysis of demographic surveys and censuses and other data sources.
  • Fieldwork in selected countries.
  • Presentations at international conferences.
  • Publications of journal articles on fertility changes in sub-Saharan Africa.

Profile

  • PhD in demography or related discipline.
  • Very good knowledge of demographic and statistical methods for the analysis of fertility data.
  • Very good knowledge of the literature on fertility changes in Africa.
  • Strong quantitative skills and very good knowledge of STATA and/or R.
  • Experience in sub-Saharan Africa, and willingness to travel to several African countries.
  • Good writing skills.
  • Good working knowledge of English and/or French.
  • Experience with qualitative methods is appreciated.

Conditions

  • Starting date: June 2019.
  • Duration: 30 months.
  • Net monthly allowance of 2,490 €.
  • Candidates should have completed their PhD in the past 5 years.
  • Candidates should not have lived in Belgium for more than 12 months in the 3 years preceding the start of the contract.

Application

Applications will include a complete CV, a motivation letter and the names and addresses of two reference persons who can be contacted.

Applications should be sent by e-mail to Bruno Schoumaker (bruno.schoumaker@uclouvain.be) before March 1, 2019.

Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Population-Environment Interactions

Post-doctoral Research Associate in Population-Environment Interactions, University of Colorado Boulder (United States)

Application review will begin 6 March 2019. 

CU Population Center (CUPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder is currently recruiting a postdoctoral fellow with expertise in population-environment research, to start August 2019. The initial term of appointment is one year, but reappointment for a second year is possible subject to performance evaluation.

CUPC, housed in the Institute of Behavioral Science, is a national leader in demographic research on population health, environmental demography and migration patterns and processes. This postdoctoral research position builds on CUPC’s strengths in environmental demography, and within that area, candidates should have research expertise in migration-climate within livelihoods and potentially including health linkages, rural demographic processes, social vulnerability and natural hazards, and/or urbanization processes and their effects on the environment and health.

Key Responsibilities:  Candidates must have experience in quantitative methods, the use of computational, statistical or data scientific approaches applied to social science or interdisciplinary research settings as well as data integration involving spatial and non-spatial data. They are expected to bring particular interest in interdisciplinary research and to participate in, and develop, projects collaborative with Earth Lab Boulder, an initiative harmonizing the wealth of Earth observation data to facilitate innovative scholarship using combinations of satellite, survey, and field data at various spatial and temporal scales.

Postdoctoral fellows are expected to spend time working independently as well as collaboratively with CUPC faculty affiliates on large-scale research projects and grant proposals. Postdoctoral researchers will be resident within CUPC in the Institute of Behavioral Science, will coordinate and/or participate in relevant working groups, regularly attend and present within the CUPC speaker series and other CUPC workshops and mentoring activities. We also expect fellows to attend the Population Association of America (PAA) annual meetings, submit two or more population-focused articles for publication during their time at CU Boulder, and help strengthen connections between CUPC and Earth Lab.

Qualifications:  Candidates must be Ph.D. degree in social sciences related to CUPC research themes.

The University of Colorado Boulder is one of the largest employers in Boulder County and offers an inspiring higher education environment. The University of Colorado Boulder is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and offers excellent benefits, including medical, dental, retirement, paid time off, tuition benefit and ECO Pass.

Application review will begin March 6, 2019.

The candidate’s cover letter should describe research interests and a 2-year plan including potential collaborative links as related to above substantive areas of interest.  Application materials will not be accepted via email and must be submitted online through CU Boulder Jobs.

For questions or additional information please contact Lori Hunter, Director, CU Population Center: Lori.Hunter@colorado.edu

Call for Applications: 15th Migration Summer School – Bridging the gaps: Connecting Research, Public Debates and Policy-Making on Migration (Florence, 6/24-7/5/2019)

Call for Applications:

15th Migration Summer School: Bridging the gaps: connecting research, public debates and policy-making on migration
Florence, Italy, 24 June–5 July 2019

Deadline for applications: 24 March 2019

The Migration Policy Centre is now taking applications for the 2019 edition of the Migration Summer School, which will take place at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) from 24th June – 5th July 2019. Applications are welcome from research and policy professionals to create an enriching mix of postgraduate students, civil servants, international organisation practitioners, NGO workers, journalists, policy analysts and teachers from around the world. The Migration Policy Centre has a long-standing experience in organising summer schools and executive trainings. It has been selected by the European Commission (DG DEVCO) to train civil servants in Brussels and in the EU Delegations worldwide. It coordinates the provision of training in the field of migration for the European University Institute’s new School of Transnational Governance.

Seven scholarships will be funded by the School of Transnational Governance on a merit basis. Scholarships will cover the fees, travel and accommodation and they will be awarded to outstanding candidates applying from low income economies in Africa and Asia.

For more information and details about the application process, please see the Migration Summer School page on the MPC website.
Visit the MPC website: http://www.migrationpolicycentre.eu

Visit the MPC Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MigrationPolicyCentre

Visit the MPC Twitter page: https://twitter.com/migrpolcentre

Call for Applications: 2019 Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality (Moscow, 6/10-6/14/2019)

HCEO is pleased to announce that applications are now open for our 2019 Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality (SSSI) Moscow. SSSI will provide a state-of-the-art overview on the study of inequality and human flourishing. Through rigorous lectures, students will be trained on the tools needed to study the issue of inequality.

The summer school will be held at the New Economic School in Moscow from June 10 through June 14, 2019. It is our second SSSI program to be held in Russia. SSSI Moscow is organized by HCEO Co-Director Steven Durlauf and MIP network member Shlomo Weber.

The summer school is open to graduate students from around the world. Participants will be selected from a diverse pool of applicants, representing many disciplines, including: economics, sociology, public health, public policy, and education.

Details on how to apply, as well as more information, can be found here. You may find additional information about SSSI, including past programs and videos, here. Please contact coordinator.hceo@uchicago.edu with any questions.

Click here to apply for Summer School in Moscow.

 

Deadline Extended – Call for Project Proposals: Data Science for Social Good

Given the recent spate of inclement weather that disrupted many people’s work schedules, we have extended the project proposal submission deadline for our Data Science for Social Good Program by a few days.

The deadline is one week from today, on February 21st at 11:59 pm.

The full call for proposals can be found here.

And please read our FAQ guide for prospective project leads before submitting.

CSDE Affiliates Co-Author Two Minimum Wage Ordinance Studies

UW News recently featured two studies about Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance conducted by research teams replete with CSDE Affiliates. One paper, published in the Social Work and Society International Online Journal, found that more than half of Seattle’s child care businesses were affected by increased labor costs. Co-authors include CSDE Affiliates Heather D. Hill and Scott W. Allard, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, Jennifer Romich, School of Social Work, and Jennifer J. Otten, Health Services.

Another article, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found no significant evidence of price increases on local area supermarket food prices associated with the minimum wage ordinance. CSDE Affiliates Mark Long, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, and Jennifer J. Otten, Health Services, are co-authors.

Congratulations to all for leading such important research!

Tim Thomas’s Report on Disproportionate Evictions of Black Residents Featured in Multiple Media Outlets

CSDE Affiliate Tim Thomas, Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute & Department of Sociology, heads the UW Evictions Project and is the lead researcher for a report recently released by Washington State’s Democratic legislators in support of legislation aimed at redressing the housing crisis.

The study looks at evictions across Washington and finds that they disproportionately affect women and people of color. Researchers determined that 1 in 11 black King County residents were evicted between 2004 and 2017. In Pierce County, one in six black residents were evicted over the same time span.

Thomas conducts research on how evictions intersect with race, gender, and class. “Not only are evictions a function of the housing crisis, and [a contributor] to the homeless population, but [they are] also a civil rights issue,” he said.

The researchers scraped court records from across Washington state to get names and addresses of people who had “unlawful detainers” — were given three days to pay rent or move out, and who didn’t pay up. They then used machine learning on those two pieces of information to infer the races of the people on the list.

Media mentions include KUOW, The Daily UW, Sequim Gazette, SeattleMet, KOMO News

Rebecca Rebbe, Joe Mienko, and Ali Rowhani-Rahbar Publish Papers on Prenatal Substance Exposure and Child Protection

A team of CSDE scholars featuring trainee Rebecca Rebbe, Social Work, Affiliate Joe Mienko, Senior Research Scientist at Partners for Our Children, Social Work, and Affiliate Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, has just published two articles on prenatal substance exposure and child protection. Both papers use population-based linked administrative data, specifically birth, hospital discharge, and child protective services (CPS) records.

The first paper, “Child protection reports and removals of infants diagnosed with prenatal substance exposure,” was published in Child Abuse & Neglect. Findings indicate that most infants diagnosed with  prenatal substance exposure (PSE) were not removed by child protective services. Minority PSE infants were not reported to CPS or removed by CPS more than white infants, presenting opportunities for targeted prevention efforts.

The second, “Hospital Variation in Child Protection Reports of Substance Exposed Infants,” has been published in The Journal of Pediatrics. It finds that hospital-level and individual birth-level factors impact the likelihood of infants prenatally exposed to substances being reported to CPS. Targeted education and improved policies are necessary to ensure more standardized approaches to CPS reporting of prenatal substance exposure.

What Lies Ahead: The Long-Term Impacts of Rising Disaster Costs on Social Inequality

James R Elliott, Professor of Sociology at Rice University, will discuss newly published findings on how rising natural disaster costs drive rising social inequality over individual lifetimes, and the extent to which federal disaster assistance is exacerbating rather than reducing this social problem. Longitudinal data come from approximately 3,400 randomly selected Americans drawn from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics who experienced varying degrees of local disaster damage in their counties of residence during 1999-2013. Implications call for wider recognition of how disaster recovery should not just respond to pre-existing social inequalities but also minimize the growth of these inequalities in the years that follow.

Consider Applying to the Upcoming IAPHS Pre-Conference Workshop on Interdisciplinary Research in Population Health and Health Disparities

This one-day workshop on 10/1/2019 will provide an orientation to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, challenges inherent in interdisciplinary work, and skills and resources that facilitate interdisciplinary success in population health science. Funded by a grant from NICHD, the PI, Christine Bachrach (University of Maryland) worked closely with several co-investigators including three CSDE Affiliates: Sara Curran, CSDE Director and Professor of International Studies, Sociology & Public Policy, Anjum Hajat, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, and David Takeuchi, Professor of Social Work (returning to UW in 2019).

Workshop participants will engage with leading population health and interdisciplinary scholars in interactive group exercises and case studies with a focus on the combining the knowledge, theory, and methods of diverse fields to understand and address health disparities. The workshop is open to scientists training and/or working in any field that contributes knowledge, at one or more levels of analysis (from the molecular to the societal and environmental), relevant to understanding the causes of health disparities and/or the ways in which health disparities can be ameliorated. Students who have completed at least two years of post-baccalaureate training in a specific discipline and early career scientists are especially encouraged to apply, but individuals at all career stages are welcome.
Workshop enrollment is limited to facilitate the success of small-group activities.

The workshop will take place on 10/1/2019, 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM, at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel, in Seattle. Applications will be accepted through 5/5/2019. Applicants will be notified by the end of June. Funding to defray travel costs will be available on a limited basis.