A two-day part-BSPS funded interdisciplinary workshop on childbearing and evolutionary theory will take place in St John’s College, Oxford between March 31st and April 1st 2011. BSPS members are cordially invited to apply to participate. There are a limited number of places available.

Registration is free but participants will be expected to pay for travel, food and accommodation (although we can arrange accommodation at St John’s College on your behalf). The cost of a package of overnight accommodation and meals at the college will be around £100, although participants are welcome to make their own arrangements.

If you wish to apply to participate, please e-mail a short statement of your professional interests to anna.rotkirch@socres.ox.ac.uk by 18.2.2011. Please indicate in the email that you are a member of BSPS. We will notify you of acceptance by 25.2.2011.

The workshop is organised by the Oxford Centre for Population Studies and the research project “Reproductive behaviour in contemporary societies”. It has received funding by St John’s College, the Kone Foundation, the Galton Foundation and the British Society for Population Studies.

IAOS Conference 2011: Belfast, Northern Ireland 17-19 August 2011 “The Demography of Ageing and Official Statistics”

An International Association for Official Statistics conference will be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland between 17th and 19th August 2011. The theme of the conference will be “The Demography of Ageing and Official Statistics”. The conference will consist of 12 invited speakers. Amongst others confirmed speakers include

Dr Richard Suzman: Director of Social Research at United States National Institute on Aging – Keynote Speaker

Professor James Banks: Research Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies, London Professor David Canning: Professor of Economics and International Health, Harvard University Dr. George Leeson: Deputy Director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing, University of Oxford Professor Nico Keilman:  Professor of Economics, University of Oslo and Editor of Demographic Research Journal Professor Brendan Whelan: Professor of Gerontology, Trinity College Dublin and Director of The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing

On-line registration for the conference will open in March and the cost will be around £200GBP. If you wish to be put on the conference mailing list or require further details please e-mail: IAOS2011@dfpni.gov.uk

The Census Programme are holding a workshop on ‘Spatial and Social Clasification’ at the School of Geography, University of Leeds. The event will take place on Tuesday 8th of June, 2010.

Booking and further information are available at: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2455

The classification of places and people has become an increasingly popular activity from the perspective of those seeking to understand the nature of spatial and social inequality and for those aiming to target consumers. National
spatial classifications have been developed by both public and private sector teams and this workshop aims to provide some guidance on how to build national spatial classifications, what data sets and statistical methods are
needed, what obstacles are encountered, how robust are the classifications that are produced and what are they used for. The workshop also considers the issue of social classifications and their harmonisation.

This workshop is free to attend and aimed at those working or studying in UK higher or further education institutions.

Workshop details:

Time: 14.00-16.30
Date: Friday, 22 January 2010
Venue: Room 46AD03, The University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH

The Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (LS) offers a 1% sample of the population of England and Wales. It draws its data from each Census (1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 so far), linking the information (on both individual and household) together to form a developing history for each sample member. Data are also drawn from the Registrar General’s birth and death records, among other sources. It is a very important data source for many fundamental population studies. Recent topics of LS research have included inequalities in life expectancy, health and socio-economic status; a profile of the ‘oldest old’; migration trends; the outcomes of cohabitation; the effects of childlessness and of single parenthood in women; and the changing ethnic distribution of the population.

Despite the importance of the LS it remains little-known outside government departments, and yet it is not difficult to use. The aim of this workshop is to describe the LS, some possible research uses of it and how to access it; and to offer hands-on experience of analysing the LS by means of specimen datasets. The Longitudinal Studies of Scotland and Northern Ireland will be briefly described, as will the other Census data resources available for academic use in England and Wales. Hands-on exercises will use SPSS; guidance will be provided for those unfamiliar with it.

This workshop is free to attend.

Booking and further information:
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2348

The forthcoming ESRC Seminar Series ‘Challenges in neighbourhood effects research: does it really matter where you live and what are the implications for policy?’ is organised jointly by the Centre of Housing Research, University of St Andrews, Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow and CCSR, University of Manchester.

The first seminar, ‘Neighbourhood Effects: Theory and Evidence‘, to be held in St Andrews, is scheduled for the 4th and 5th February 2010, starting at 10:30am on the 4th and finishing at 3:00pm on the 5th.

Confirmed speakers include George Galster, Mario Small, Ruth Lupton, Ed Fieldhouse, Steven Durlauf, Paul Cheshire, and Geoff Meen.

Full details can be found on the seminar website: www.neighbourhoodeffects.org

Places are strictly limited: to register your interest in attending the Seminar Series, please email: mail@neighbourhoodeffects.org by Monday the 16th of November.

Attendance at the seminar, including buffet lunch, is free of charge. Transport to St Andrews, and accommodation costs are at your own expense.

The Royal Statistical Society are hosting a workshop on developing undergraduate quantitative methods teaching in sociology, social policy, politics and international relations, social anthropology and other social science subjects beyond economics and psychology.

It will take place on Friday 23^rd October at the Royal Statistical Society, Errol St, London from 09.30 to 16.30.

Those speaking at the workshop include ESRC Chief Executive Ian Diamond, Sharon Witherspoon MBE, Nuffield Foundation and Patrick Sturgis of the National Centre for Research Methods. The leaders of the pilot projects established by the ESRC to explore ways of encouraging undergraduate social science students to make greater use of quantitative methods and improve their skills will also present their results

There is no charge for attending the workshop, but places are limited and prior registration is required. A buffet lunch will be provided.

To register please return the attached registration form by email to:

john.macinnes@ed.ac.uk

Travel expenses up to a maximum of £75 can be reimbursed for a limited number of participants from outside the Greater London area unable to find funding from their own institutions.

If you would like to apply for this funding please indicate this on the registration form.

More information: Workshop programme and Workshop registration form

Census.ac.uk are pleased to announce a new series of workshops for the coming academic year.

The workshops are free and you can book as many as you like.

The first two workshops will be held on 27 and 28 October at the University of Stirling. Book soon to avoid disappointment.

Click on the links below to see further details, and to complete the online booking form.

27 October 2009 (University of Stirling)
Workshop: Working with longitudinal Scottish census data (with a focus on
spatial data)
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2320

28 October 2009 (University of Stirling)
Workshop: An introduction to mapping census data
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2321

15 December 2009 (City University, London)
Workshop: using census data in methods teaching
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2322

8 January 2010 (University of Cardiff)
Census data workshop: using migration data and the ONS Longitudinal Study
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2327

3 February 2010 (University of Southampton)

Census data workshop: changing geography masterclass
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2323

15 March 2010 (University of Essex)
Workshop: Overview of census data resources
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=2328

More to come. See our workshops webpage for a complete list of forthcoming
workshops: http://census.ac.uk/News/Workshops.aspx

The University of Southampton has two upcoming courses in “small area estimation” run out of the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute by Danny Pfeffermann and Pedro Silva.

The first course “Small Area Estimation” runs from 12th to 14th October 2009.

This is followed by “Advanced Methods for Small Area Estimation” taking place 15th – 16th February 2010.

Further information is available here.

The University of Stirling are holding the forthcoming LSCS Introductory Training Workshop on Tuesday 15th September 2009.

This training workshop is open to academics, non-academics and students and is designed to provide a detailed introduction to the data that are available and how they may be used. The course is introductory and no prior knowledge of the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) is anticipated.

Further information is available here.

Call for participants

‘Fertility declines in the past, present and future: what we don’t know and what we need to know’

A joint workshop of

 the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research,  

the British Society for Population Studies

and

the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure

Dates: 15-17^th July 2009

Location: Cambridge Group for the History of Population, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge & Downing College, Cambridge, UK

Organising committee

Dr Eilidh Garrett, Cambridge Group (eilidh.garrett@btinternet.com )

Dr Rebecca Sear, London School of Economics (r.sear@lse.ac.uk )

Dr Mikolaj Szoltysek, Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research (szoltysek@demogr.mpg.de )

Administrative Team:

Anne Shepherd BSPS

Birgit Moeller MPIDR

Workshop description

Fertility decline is now universal. But, despite decades of research, we still have no universal explanation for why fertility declines. Changes in reproductive patterns due to the demographic transition have been a central focus of research within post-war demography. However, over recent years fertility research has confronted challenges to almost all its initial presumptions, models and theories. This critical process has been accompanied by an extensive accumulation of detailed empirical evidence which has emphasized localized cultural, economic and environmental factors affecting family formation rules and couples’ reproductive decisions in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, this new evidence has been piling up faster than its theoretical implications could be assimilated.

The time is therefore right to assess the current state of research into fertility decline, and the theories underpinning it, to suggest future directions for both research and policy. At this meeting, we intend to gather an inter-disciplinary and international group of researchers to discuss what is known about fertility decline, what remains unknown, and how might the unknown become known and better understood. It is our hope that bringing together representative demographers, economists, historical demographers, evolutionary biologists  and anthropologists drawn from of all three ‘strands’ of fertility research  –  i.e. working in the context of historic, contemporary developed and contemporary developing populations – who do not often have the opportunity to meet and communicate fruitfully with one another,  will facilitate new energies and research initiatives to understand fertility change in the past, present and future. Our intention is to re-evaluate ways in which fertility research has been conducted so far, and to open new horizons by pushing forward methodological and theoretical frameworks for the study of human reproduction. Such an endeavour to generate a new understanding of fertility trends is particularly timely given current concerns across the contemporary developed world about extremely low rates of fertility. 

Conference programme

We intend the format of the meeting to a mix of short presentations of pre-read papers followed by discussion panels, leading to more general discussion. The pre-read format will allow participants to make best use of the time available during the workshop to move forward the discussion. The number of participants will be limited so that all those attending can actively take part in the discussions.

Speakers & discussants

The following have stated their intention of attending as either speakers or members of discussion panels:

George Alter, Indiana University

Greg Clark, University of California, Davis

John Cleland, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

David Coleman, University of Oxford

Paul Demeny, Population Council

Tim Dyson, London School of Economics

Joshua Goldstein/Sebastian Klüsener, Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research

Ruth Mace, University College London

Geoffrey McNicoll, Population Council

Mike Murphy, London School of Economics

Lesley Newson, University of Exeter

Máire Ní Bhrolcháin, University of Southampton

Dimiter Philipov, Vienna Institute of Demography

David Reher, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Tomáš Sobotka, Vienna Institute of Demography

Simon Szreter, University of Cambridge

Arland Thornton, University of Michigan

Dirk Van de Kaa, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

Frans van Poppel, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

Sarah Walters, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Chris Wilson, University of St Andrews

Bob Woods, University of Liverpool                 

Call for participants

We would like to invite applications for the remaining places for participants from individuals working in the field of fertility decline who wish to contribute to this workshop. We already have a full line-up of speakers but would like to invite non-presenting participants to attend the workshop and engage in discussion and debate. Please copy your email response to all 3 members of the organising committee (at the addresses given above) by 15 May 2009 including a short statement of your research activities and the reasons for your interest in participation in this meeting. Owing to the limitation on the number of participants it may not be possible to accept all applications to take part in this workshop, so please state as clearly as possible your reasons for wishing to take part.

Those responding to this call should be aware that they will be expected to meet their own travel, subsistence and accommodation costs. However, a small number of travel bursaries (to a maximum of £100 each, on provision of receipts) will be available for post-graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Please state in your email whether you would like to be considered for one of these bursaries.

Oxford Institute of Ageing Spring School
‘The Multi-disciplinary Toolkit for Global Ageing’
University of Oxford
19-23 April 2009

Deadline for registrations: 2 April 2009
Download the updated brochure here:
http://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/system/files/SpringSchoolBrochure2009.pdf

This four day school will address concepts and tools in demography, bio-demography, bio-medical research and practice, economics, sociology, health and policy. Special emphasis will be placed on developing methodological skills, both from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Additional opportunities for networking and informal discussion will be provided through poster sessions and workshops.

Costs for participation:
£550 (without accommodation)
£800 (including 4 nights B&B).

Places are limited, and registration will close on 2 April 2009.
For more information on the School and registration details please go to:
http://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/education/spring-school
or email to: angelika.kaiser@ageing.ox.ac.uk .