The Berkeley Population Center (BPC) is pleased to announce a new call for pilot grants for faculty affiliates. Pilot grant proposals submitted by February 1, 2026 will be given full consideration, but grant submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis pending availability of funds. We give funding priority to projects aligned with the mission of NICHD’s Population Dynamics Branch and show strong promise to support extramural grant proposals. Grants awarded are typically between $3,000-$15,000 in direct costs over a one-to-two year period. Read more about the call and apply.

In addition, a reminder that UC Berkeley’s Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging (CEDA) also has a call for both innovation and emerging scholar pilot proposals for projects related to its signature themes on the economics and demography of aging. Details and instructions are found on the CEDA website. 

If you are unsure as to whether BPC or a CEDA pilot is the right fit for your project, email CEDA director Will Dow (wdow@berkeley.edu) and/or BPC executive director Michelle Poulin (mpoulin@berkeley.edu) to inquire.  

******

Take advantage of the extended deadline for abstract submissions for the ​2026 Workshop on Determinants of Adult Mortality, Morbidity, and Healthy Aging in LMICs, held virtually on March 6, 2026. Abstracts are now due on December 15, 2025. See workshop and submission details here.

SAVE THE DATE: BPC and CEDA will co-host a Spring Symposium on Population Research on April 17, 2026, at the Faculty Club on campus. Details to come.  

******

Featured affiliate research of the week: What Do Policies Value? (2025). Daniel Björkegren , Joshua E Blumenstock, and Samsun Knight. Review of Economic Studies.  

See further announcements and opportunities below.

******

EVENTS

December 8 | 2-3:30pm | Sociology Department Colloquium Series | Reuben Jonathan Miller, Associate Professor in the Crown Family School and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation; Associated Faculty, Sociology. “The Least: Violence, the Vulnerable, and Black Freedom’s Promise for a New World.” Hybrid event: 402 Social Sciences Building, and zoom.

December 8 | 4:10-5:30pm | Seminar 271, Development Seminar | Erin Kelley, Assistant Professor Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. “Beliefs, Forecasts, and Investments: Experimental Evidence from India.” 648 Evans Hall. 

FUNDING

Secondary Analysis Pilot Program (SAPP): Call for Proposals

Issued by: ECO-Health and the UC Center for Climate, Health and Equity (CCHE)
Funding amount: Four awards of up to $10,000 each
Project period: April 1st, 2026 – May 1st, 2027

The ECO-Health Center and CCHE invite proposals for the Secondary Analysis Pilot Program (SAPP). This program is designed to catalyze innovative, high-impact research that leverages existing environmental and health datasets to examine how ecological and contextual factors influence health outcomes. SAPP aims to foster interdisciplinary research and generate actionable insights to inform data-driven decision-making for policy and practice. Applicants are encouraged to use available datasets for California (e.g. CalEnviroScreen, Healthy Places Index, UCSF Health Atlas, etc.), but proposals may also draw on other relevant datasets, especially for health outcomes. Read the full call here.

OPPORTUNITIES

1. NextGenPop Undergraduate Program in Population Research

In-person on June 7-19, 2026 at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN

Applications due February 5, 2026

NextGenPop aims to increase the diversity of the population field and nurture the next generation of population scholars. The program includes a 2-week, in-person, on-campus summer experience and subsequent virtual components focused on research and professional development. The summer 2026 session, 20 undergraduate students will be hosted by the University of Minnesota, June 7-19. Classroom instruction and hands-on applications address contemporary social and policy issues in population research, including race and income inequalities, health disparities, immigration, and family change. Learn more and apply here.

2. Awards sponsored by the American Sociological Association Population Section (see attached PDF on how to nominate, all due March 1, 2026):

• Otis Dudley Duncan Award (book award)
• Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship in Population Award
• Student Paper Award
• Distinguished Career Award

Awards sponsored by the ASA (click below to see details on each award and how to nominate, all due January 1, 2026): 

• Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award
• Dissertation Award
• Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology
• Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award
• Distinguished Scholarly Book Award
• Early Career Award for Community Engaged Scholarship
• Jessie Bernard Award
• Public Understanding of Sociology Award
• W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award

3. How-to Tuesdays: Ready to turn ideas into action? Join a new 45-minute webinar series hosted by Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences (IAPHS) designed to help sharpen time management, navigate journal reviews, set research agendas, and more. Learn more and register here.

• Upcoming sessions:
  • December 16 – “How to Increase Productivity: 7 Thoughts” with Sandro Galea
  • January 6 – “How to Approach a Perspective Mentor” with Roland J. Thorpe Jr.
  • January 20 – “How to do a Journal Review” with David F. Warner

CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS

1.The American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2026’s online portal is now open for submissions. The meeting will take place in New York City, August 7-11, 2026. Deadline for submissions is February 25, 2026. Call for submissions to sessions sponsored by the Population Section are as follows:

• Advances in Social Science Genomics (co-sponsored by Biology and Society Section)
• Climate Change and Population Health 
• Demography of Housing Inequality and Instability
• Families and Migration (co-sponsored by Sociology of the Family Section)
• Fertility: Open Call Paper Session
• Morbidity and Mortality: Open Call Paper Session
• Politics and Population Processes
• Sociology of Reproduction
• Sociology of Population Section Roundtables

2. The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) is pleased to announce the 2026 Conference on Development Economics, hosted by the Stanford King Center on Global Development, on Friday, May 15 and Saturday, May 16, 2026. We invite submissions on any topic within the area of development economics. The conference will feature the following sessions:

• Friday, May 15 (morning): 20-minute presentations of research at an early stage, reserved for non-tenured presenters
• Friday, May 15 (afternoon) + Saturday, May 16 (morning): Full-length presentations on research at an advanced stage

Everyone is invited to attend all sessions of the conference, and non-tenured researchers are encouraged to submit to either session. All papers presented at the conference will be selected through this open submission process. Submit your paper on Slideroom by January 14, 2026, 11:59 PM PT. The final program will be announced no later than February 23, 2026. If you have any questions, please email kingcenter_events@stanford.edu. 

3. SASE 2026 Mini-Conference MC03 – Social and Political Dynamics of Insecurity
Bordeaux, France, 1–3 July 2025 & Virtual session 22–24 June 2025.  ‘Precarity’ and ‘insecurity’ encompass more than mere employment uncertainty; they refer to the micro-experiences of socioeconomic insecurity faced by working class individuals and the shrinking middle class (often referred to as the ‘squeezed middle’) worldwide. Our mini-conference is concerned with advancing the empirical and theoretical understanding of the social and political manifestations and effects of socioeconomic insecurity around the world.

The mini-conference aims to clarify the interplay between macro-processes and micro-manifestations of precarity, and bridge the gap between economic and cultural strands in socioeconomic studies. Our second aim is to deepen the understanding of the relationship between insecurity and contemporary forms of social and political conflicts around the world. Our third aim is to deepen the understanding of the contextual factors that shape insecurity in the new global order. Different sociodemographic groups (e.g. shaped by age, gender, class, and race/ethnicity) may experience and respond to the crises in disparate and unequal ways, which gives rise to varying degrees of socioeconomic insecurity. Deadline for submissions: December 16, 2025. Full Mini-Conference Description (MC03) is here.

4. Regional Conference on Child Marriage and Sexual Violence Against Adolescents in West and Central Africa. Dakar, Senegal & Hybrid/Virtual, 9-11 February 2026. The Population and Health Research Institute (PHERI), the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) and the Union for African Population Studies (UAPS), invite extended abstracts from junior/early-career researchers for a focused, hybrid technical workshop in Dakar that will seed a Special Issue of the Journal of African Population Studies (JAPS) on child marriage and sexual violence against adolescents (CM/SVAA) in West and Central Africa. Eligibility:

• Junior / early-career researchers (5 years post highest degree OR current doctoral candidates) based in or working on West & Central Africa.
• Single-country or multi-country analyses welcome; feasibility (data access/ethics) is essential.
• Co-authorship with implementers, youth groups, or service providers is encouraged.

Submission Deadline: December 20, 2025
Submit your extended abstract via email to: conferences@uaps-uepa.org. 

Subject Line: Abstract Submission – WCAC – Your Last Name

For queries, please contact UAPS Secretariat: uaps@uaps-uepa.org

Webinar

5. Beyond the PUMA: Supplemental Geography in ACS Microdata from IPUMS USA

Wednesday, December 10; 1:00-2:00pm CT | Register for the Beyond the PUMA webinar

The only sub-state units identified in the publicly available microdata from the American Community Survey are Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). The correspondence between PUMAs and other standard geographies is often inexact and PUMA definitions are updated after each decennial census, causing inconsistencies in geographic correspondences across time. IPUMS USA translates PUMA information into a range of supplementary geographic variables, including identifiers for counties, cities, and metro areas, multiple indicators of urban/rural status, and “consistent PUMAs,” which capture consistent geographic footprints across time. Join us for a webinar that will describe these PUMA-based variables, highlighting their key features, the methods we use to produce them, and other important considerations for their use.

CALL FOR PAPERS

1. Family Formation in Transition: Determinants, Differentials, and Inequality in South Korea (special issue of the Journal of Comparative Family Studies)

Submissions due January 31, 2026

South Korea offers a compelling case for understanding the complexities of contemporary family formation. The country has undergone rapid and far-reaching transformations in family formation—marked by delayed marriage, rising singlehood, and one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. These shifts reflect broader structural and cultural dynamics, including gender inequality, economic precarity, and evolving family values.

This Special Issue seeks to advance a comprehensive and innovative understanding of the socioeconomic and cultural contexts that shape family formation in South Korea. Given that delayed marriage, rising singlehood, and declining fertility are common features across many developed economies, the Korean experience provides a critical vantage point for examining the determinants, differentials, and inequalities in family formation in the twenty-first century. All questions and submissions should be directed to the Guest Editor: Sojung Lim (sjlim25@buffalo.edu). Learn more here.

2. Special Issue of Demographic Research on De/Re-institutionalization of Asian Families. We are inviting you to submit contributions to the Special Collection of Demographic Research on the “De/Re-institutionalization of Asian Families,” organized by Lake Lui, Bussarawan Puk Teerawichitchainan, and Adam Ka-lok Cheung. Submissions to this collection are possible until February 28, 2026. Please find more information on the collection’s description and goals as well as on submission procedures here.

DATA

IPUMS NHGIS has released its fifth set of GIS boundary files for 1980 census blocks. This release adds blocks for 38 metro areas including Miami; Buffalo; Portland, OR; San Antonio; Charlotte; and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario. In total, NHGIS now provides block boundaries for 186 metro areas, including all the top 60 by 1980 population.

IPUMS CPS has released the September 2025 monthly data. We are also pleased to announce the availability of an extended time series of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). These historical SPM data, which cover the 1968-2009 ASEC samples, were created by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University to enable the examination of poverty with the more nuanced SPM methodology that is available for the 2010-forward ASEC data.

IPUMS IHGIS has released population censuses for Azerbaijan 2009, Kenya 2019, and Nigeria 2006, and agricultural census data for South Africa 2007. The Azerbaijan data had never before been digitized, and the Nigeria data are the first IPUMS census data for the country.