This week’s brownbag seminar is Wednesday, February 11th at 12pm, with Soren Larsen, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Demography Department at UC Berkeley. Dr. Larsen will present “Understanding the Role of Social Disparities in Shaping Respiratory Disease Dynamics.” The event will take place in Room 310 in the Social Sciences Building and will also be available via Zoom. See the full event details here. Our YouTube channel is here. Visit our Brown Bag event page for both past and upcoming talks here.
Featured affiliate research of the week: A Longitudinal Portrait of California’s Kindergarten English Learners & Their Learning Outcomes. (2025). Sarah Novicoff, Sean F. Reardo, and Rucker Johnson. AERA Open, 11.
See further announcements and opportunities below.
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EVENTS
February 9 | 2-3:30pm | Sociology Department Colloquium Series | Felix Elwert, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Three Paths to Equality: The Roles of Education in Social Stratification.” 402 Social Sciences Building. Zoom link here; Meeting ID: 912 1296 2018.
February 11 | 12-1:05pm | UC Berkeley Demography Seminar Series | Soren Larsen, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Demography Department at UC Berkeley. “Understanding the Role of Social Disparities in Shaping Respiratory Disease Dynamics.” 310 Social Sciences Building. Zoom ID: 985 2901 0198. Passcode DEMOG_BB
FUNDING
Call for Proposals: 2026-2027 Matrix Research Teams. Social Science Matrix invites proposals from faculty, students, and affiliated researchers for Matrix Research Teams for the 2026-2027 academic year. The deadline to apply is March 16, 2026 at 5:00pm.
Matrix Research Teams are emerging research communities who gather regularly to explore or develop a novel question or growing field in the social sciences. Successful research teams integrate participants from several disciplines, address a compelling research question with real-world significance, and deploy or develop appropriate methodologies in innovative ways.
- Faculty-led Research Teams can receive funding up to $5000. They run for one to two semesters, meeting at least eight times around a defined research problem. Led or co-led by tenure-track faculty or advanced affiliated researchers from UC Berkeley, these teams can take the form of a reading or discussion group, a working group developing a research project, or a speaker series held at Matrix.
- Student-led Research Teams will receive funding up to $1500. Coordinated by one or more graduate students, they meet regularly, around 5-10 times over the course of the academic year, and explore an emerging field — a new area or question of inquiry — and assess whether it has potential for further investigation.
Russell Sage Foundation – Social, Political and Economic Inequality Research Grants
Award amount: $200,000
Sponsor deadline: 03/11/2026
Program description: The Russell Sage Foundation’s (RSF) program on Social, Political, and Economic Inequality supports innovative research on the factors that contribute to social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S., and the extent to which those inequalities affect social, political, psychological, and economic outcomes such as educational and labor market access and opportunities, social and economic mobility within and across generations, and civic participation and representation. Learn more and apply.
WEBINARS
The New Wave of SRH Indicators: Where Do Fertility Goals Fit In? Hosted by the Ohio Population Consortium. There has been a recent surge of efforts to develop new indicators of sexual and reproductive health, indicators intended to supplant the constructs “unmet need for contraception” and “demand satisfied” that have served as featured indicators during the past two decades. The proposed indicators reflect an effort to achieve a more woman-centered approach to both SRH science and policy. Fertility goals were essential ingredients of the past indicators. Where do they fit in now? Have they been sidelined (deliberately or unintentionally)? If so, is this defensible and desirable, from both a scientific and policy perspective? The aim of this webinar is to have an energetic exchange about these (and related) questions. Register now for this webinar that will take place Thursday, Feb. 12 at 12pm ET.
Register for 2026 Dementia Care Summit. Registration is now live for the 2026 Dementia Care Summit taking place virtually on March 17-19, 2026. The official Care Summit website will be updated with additional details in the coming days. Learn more and register here. Email NIADementiaCareSummit@mail.nih.gov with questions
CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS
Workshop: New Data, Methods, and Theory: Life-Course Cognitive Inequality. Yale University is hosting an interdisciplinary workshop that will chart a forward-looking agenda for aging and disparities research by integrating rigorous social theory with computational innovation, causal inference, and new measurement strategies. We aim to bring together researchers across sociology, epidemiology, psychology, economics, neuroscience, statistics, and data science to drive the next wave of conceptual and methodological breakthroughs in the field. We especially encourage submissions that advance analytical innovation in modeling cognition, leverage novel or interdisciplinary data sources, and clarify mechanisms of life-course inequality and resilience. Work that addresses disparities across racialized, socioeconomic, gendered, and geographic contexts, or that improves the validity and equity of cognitive assessment tools, will be particularly welcome. May 11-12 at Yale University, New Haven, CT. Submissions due March 1. Learn more and submit here.
The Society of Family Planning is now accepting scientific abstracts and session proposals for #SFP2026, to be held October 17-19 in San Francisco. Colleagues are encouraged to submit timely topics that advance the science and medicine of abortion and contraception in the U.S.
Session Proposals (more information)
- Deadline: March 3
- Formats include pre-conference workshops, plenaries, and concurrent sessions.
- Proposals should offer actionable takeaways, center evidence‑informed content, and include presenters with relevant expertise.
Scientific Abstracts (more information)
- Deadline: March 17
- Abstracts should address timely topics and knowledge gaps, and demonstrate strong methodology.
Questions? Contact AnnualMeetingSubmissions@SocietyFP.org
OPPORTUNITIES
NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Early Career Workshop Now Accepting Applications.
Applications are due February 13, 2026 11:59 pm ET. Gain insights from NIH program officers and scientific review officers on writing strong National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant proposals and navigating the peer review process. Network with NIH program staff and fellow early career researchers, exchange ideas, and connect with potential collaborators. The workshop will take place on June 3, 2026, at the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD. Learn more and apply.
Nominations are due March 1, 2026, for the inaugural Katherine K. Wallman Award for Transformative Impact on Federal, State, or Local Statistics. The award was created by the American Statistical Association with the Section on Government Statistics and the Washington Statistical Society to recognize the critical importance of seeking ways to transform the utility of official statistics to the users of those statistics. The award will recognize individuals or small groups for their significant contributions that advance the relevance, credibility, utility, and objectivity of official statistics at the federal, state, or local level in a manner that provides for solutions to pressing public policy problems and promotes the public’s trust. See this site (Katherine K. Wallman Award for Transformative Impact on Federal, State, or Local Statistics) for more information about the award and the nomination requirements (hit “nominations” to submit the information requested for your nominee).
Katherine Wallman was the legendary chief statistician of the United States from 1992-2017, who remained active not only in ASA, but also PAA (she was a member of the Committee on Population Statistics) and federal statistics matters after her retirement until her death in 2024. She brought out the better natures of everyone in federal statistics to work collaboratively to provide value to policymakers and the public.
Population journal and its Early-Career Researcher Prize Founded in 1946, Population is an international, scientific, and peer-reviewed journal published by the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). It is published quarterly in both English and French and is an open-access journal with no article processing charges (APC). Population publishes research articles from various fields of population studies, covering all regions of the world and time periods. The journal also accepts short papers, data papers as well as book reviews and commentaries. They can be submitted in either English or French.
Each year, Population awards a prize to honor the work of an early-career researcher (within a maximum of 7 years post-PhD). The prize includes €1,000 and an invitation to Paris to present the article at INED’s weekly seminar. Submissions for the next Early-Career Researcher Prize are now open : https://www.journal-population.com/early-career-researcher-prize/ Submission deadlines: 30 April or 15 October 2026 (see details on the journal website)
GGS-II Wave 3: Call for Survey Questions. The Call for Survey Questions for the Generations and Gender Survey GGS-II Wave 3 is now open. We invite researchers to submit innovative, ready-to-field survey questions or short modules to be considered for inclusion in the Wave 3 questionnaire, building on the successful experience from Wave 2. The call details are available here. Submission deadline: 22 March 2026