We share the sad news of the passing of Eugene “Gene” Hammel, at the age 95. Professor Hammel was an enormously influential anthropologist and demographer, making serious theoretical and methodological contributions to our field. His specializations included social structure and kinship; peasant society and culture; social theory; anthropological linguistics; historical demography; theory and the philosophy of explanation, and further specialized regionally in the ethnography of Europe, especially the Balkans, as well as of Latin America.

Hammel was fascinated by the statistical and formal analysis of social anthropological data. He was a principal architect of ‘SOCSIM,’ a widely-used, open-source, stochastic microsimulation platform that allows social scientists to create a simulated world where they can test how changes in fertility, mortality, and marriage rates affect family structure and kinship networks. Hammel was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He gave a fascinating Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture, which can be watched here.

Professor Hammel played a central role in creating the Berkeley Demography department in its current form, and did much to develop the broader intellectual community that persists today. He wrote up a short history of the department, which many will enjoy reading. Gene was a treasured colleague and mentor to many faculty, students, and staff at Berkeley. He will be deeply missed. 

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Join us for this week’s brownbag seminar on Wednesday, November 12, 12pm, with Jessica Ho, Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University, who will present “Routes to High Life Expectancy in High-Income Countries.” The event will take place in Room 310 in the Social Sciences Building and 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: Conceptive Risk-Taking: Personal Uncertainty, Flexible Fertility Intentions, and Twins from Medically Assisted Reproduction. Eliza Brown. (2025): 118743. Social Science & Medicine. 

See further announcements and opportunities below.

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EVENTS

November 10 | 2-3:30pm | Sociology Department Colloquium Series | Marcus Anthony Hunter, Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences Division, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, UCLA. “A Radical Theory of Repair.” Hybrid event: 402 Social Sciences Building, and zoom.

November 10 | 4:10-5:30pm | Seminar 271, Development Seminar | Arun Chandrasekhar (Stanford) presenting “On Tubes; or, Model-Building from Rich Data by Isolating Concepts,”  joint work with Matthew Jackson, Tyler McCormick, Karl Rohe, and Brian Xu. 648 Evans Hall.

November 12 | 12-1:05pm |  UC Berkeley Demography Seminar Series | Jessica Ho, Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University, who will present “Routes to High Life Expectancy in High-Income Countries.” 310 Social Sciences Building and zoom. 

Meeting ID: 985 2901 0198.

Password: DEMOG_BB

See the full event details here. 

November 13 | 4-5:30pm | Matrix on Point |  Financializing Disaster: Insurance and the Climate Crisis. The panel will feature Stephen Collier, Professor of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley; Desiree Fields, Associate Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley; and Dave Jones, Senior Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law. Meg Mills-Novoa, Assistant Professor with a joint appointment to the Division of Society and Environment in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and the Energy and Resources Group, will moderate. This panel is co-sponsored by UC Berkeley Department of Political Science, the Department of Geography, and the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI).  820 Social Sciences Building. Register here.

FUNDING

Postdoctoral Fellowship Program: Lalor Foundation. Only one postdoctoral applicant per lab/mentor may apply. $55,000 per year to cover a fellowship stipend, fringes, and institutional overhead. The program’s mission is to support postdoctoral researchers early in their work so they can become independently funded in the field of mammalian reproductive biology as related to the regulation of fertility. The deadline to apply is 9pm PT, January 15, 2026. Eligibility: The individual should have training and experience at least equal to the Ph.D. or M.D. level and should not have a faculty appointment (i.e., instructor, lecturer, or higher). The foundation prefers that potential fellows have not held the doctoral degree for more than two years. More Information. 

CONFERENCES

Call for papers: Conference on “Kinship Structures, Dynamics, and Inequalities.” To take place on June 8-9, 2026 at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany. The event is organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Kinship Structures, Dynamics and Inequalities; MPIDR; NYU Abu Dhabi; Pennsylvania State University; and the National University of Singapore. The conference will bring together researchers from across disciplines to examine how changing family and kinship systems shape social and economic inequalities in diverse contexts. We invite submissions on a wide range of topics, including kin availability and inequality, caregiving and intergenerational transfers, bereavement, LGBTQ+ and chosen kinship, and innovative data and methods for studying kin relations within and outside the household. Extended abstracts (maximum two pages, PDF) must be submitted via the conference website by 21 January 2026. Find the full call for papers attached, and feel free to share it with colleagues and networks who might be interested. For questions, please contact kinship@demogr.mpg.de.

Call for submissions: Conference and Special Issue of The Milbank Quarterly on “How Policy Contexts Impact Population Health in the United States.” The Center for Aging and Policy Studies (CAPS) and the Center for Policy Research (CPR) will host a conference on June 8-9, 2026 at Syracuse University to advance knowledge on the connections between policies and population health in a changing U.S. context. In conjunction with the CAPS-CPR conference, The Milbank Quarterly will publish a special issue in 2027. The conference and special issue seek empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions on the topic. Of particular interest are papers that link changes and variation in policy contexts to health outcomes, identify mechanisms linking policies to outcomes, or propose new ways to measure and conceptualize policy contexts for health research.  Authors intending to submit a paper to The Milbank Quarterly special issue are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract of the paper by January 15, 2026 for presentation at the CAPS-CPR conference to be held June 8-9, 2026 at Syracuse University. Up to 15 papers will be selected for the conference. The goal of the conference is to significantly strengthen each paper before its submission to the special issue. The first author of each paper will be a 2026 CAPS-CPR Conference Fellow and receive (1) reimbursement of travel expenses up to $1500, (2) feedback and suggestions from an assigned discussant and other conference fellows, and (3) a detailed written review by a guest editor of the special issue (Pinka Chatterji, Shannon M. Monnat, and Jennifer Karas Montez). Presentation at the conference is not a requirement for submitting a paper to the special issue. Application instructions and more information can be found here. 

The American Sociological Association 2026 Annual Meeting online portal is open for submissions. This is your opportunity to share your research and ideas, shape the conversation in sociology, and contribute to a dynamic and impactful program. The deadline to submit is Wednesday, February 25, 2026, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Check the Call for Submissions page for guidance on the number of appearances allowed, participant registration, ASA membership, complimentary registrations, and more. Contact the Meetings Team if you have questions. In addition to paper/extended abstract submissions, proposals are being accepted for courses, workshops, preconferences, the Sociology in Practice Settings Symposium, and the Teaching and Learning Symposium. 

OPPORTUNITIES

2025 Young Scientist Summer Program (YSSP) at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Laxenburg (Vienna), Austria, 1 June-28 August 2026. The Young Scientist Summer Program (YSSP) at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is currently accepting applications to its 2026 program (closing date is 12 January 2026, midnight CET). The program, which takes place from June to August, is designed for PhD students (ideally about 2 years prior to receiving their PhD) working on a topic compatible with ongoing research at IIASA and a wish to explore the policy implications of their work. Participants will be working under the direct mentorship of an experienced IIASA scientist in a unique interdisciplinary and international research environment. They will produce a paper (serving as a first step towards a publishable journal article) and will get the opportunity to build up contacts for future collaboration within the institute’s worldwide network. As YSSP representatives of IIASA’s Population and Just Societies (POPJUS) Program, we particularly welcome applications of candidates interested in human-centered and population-based approaches to understanding drivers of population change, sustainable development, and wellbeing. See application information. Please do not hesitate to contact us (Guillaume Marois and Elliott Woodhouse), should you have any questions or require further information. The deadline for applications: January 12TH 2026 (midnight CET).

CALL FOR PAPERS

Democracy & Society is now accepting submissions for its 23^rd volume: Democracy in Transition. The Democracy & Society journal, Georgetown University Department of Government’s flagship publication, is excited to open submissions for Volume 23. The Democracy and Society Journal joins academics and practitioners from the democracy and governance field to engage on current topics as they relate to the year’s theme. Global democracy has entered a period of transition. Populism, competitive authoritarianism, and shifting alliances in the global liberal order pose new challenges. Autocratic rulers and democratic leaders are changing how they govern and how they engage with the international community. Possible subtopics include:

• Autocracy adaptation
• America’s absence and the decline of foreign assistance
• Good-governance crises and transitions
• Populism, executive aggrandizement, and changing democratic structures

Submissions for Volume 23 of Democracy & Society should be well-written, interesting submissions of 1,500 – 2,000 words, relevant to the topic of Democracy in Transition. Submissions can be new papers, summaries, excerpts of recently completed research, and book reviews. Graduate and undergraduate submissions of high academic rigor are also accepted. The deadline to submit papers is January 12th, 2026. Visit our website to learn more about this volume’s theme, subtopics, and submission process. Please share this opportunity with your students and networks. Contributions must be submitted through this form by January 12th, 2026, in order to be considered. For more information on subtopics and the submission process, visit the “Submissions” page on democracyandsociety.net or email your questions to democracyandsocietyjournal@georgetown.edu.