Weekly News – November 20, 2017

EVENTS
Monday, November 20, 12-1 PM. “Judge Discretion and Sentencing Inequality: The Case of North Carolina”. 105 GSPP

Tuesday, November 21, 12:30-1:30 PM. Development Seminar. “Fertility Intentions revisited” and “The value of information on work seeker skills for SMEs” with Maximilian Mueller; Lukas Hensel. 648 Evans Hall.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
2018 Summer Institute in Migration Research Methods at Berkeley, funded by Russell Sage Foundation and organized by Irene Bloemraad. This summer institute will provide eight days of training in the use and analysis of migration data at Berkeley from June 17-28, 2018. It targets early career scholars (graduate students, post-docs and untenured junior faculty five years from PhD). The inaugural institute will focus on three topics: (1) collecting, imputing and analyzing data related to legal status; (2) best practices and new methods for surveying and tracking immigrant and mobile populations; and (3) the use of new data sources (e.g., web scraping, social media data) in migration studies. The institute will draw on local and national experts to train attendees and provide on-site mentorship. We also hope to develop public resources for those unable to attend. Stay tuned for more information as it is developed.

EVENTS
Monday, November 20, 12-1 PM. “Judge Discretion and Sentencing Inequality: The Case of North Carolina”. 105 GSPP

Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI) has a new new academic coordinator, Dr. Jasmijn Slootjes, who is now settled into her office in D-Lab (3rd floor of Barrows Hall). Please reach out to Jasmijn to introduce yourself and share ideas for advancing BIMI at jasmijnslootjes@berkeley.edu.

CALL FOR PAPERS
‘Diversifying Migration, Changing Policies: Patterns, Causes and Effects of Immigration and Citizenship Regulations’ at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, 10-18 April 2018, at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, a 5-day workshop organized by Maarten Vink and Marc Helbling. The deadline for abstracts is 6 December 2017. For more information on the content and the format of the workshop see below and here: https://ecpr.eu/Events/PanelDetails.aspx?PanelID=6787&EventID=112. For any information and questions please contact us at marc.helbling@uni-bamberg.de and m.vink@maastrichtuniversity.nl.

Networks and Spatial Economics, a special issue on ‘Intersections between Urban Studies and Network Science’ References to ‘urban networks’ in scientific books and articles have grown exponentially over the past years. Research on the topic now extends across many social and natural science disciplines and over many scales of analysis from the intra-urban formation of social networks among neighbours, to the regional formation of transportation networks between cities, to the formation of transnational economic networks between global cities. To further articulate this fast-evolving literature, Networks and Spatial Economics (NETS, http://www.springer.com/economics/regional+science/journal/11067, IF = 2.66) will publish a special issue on ‘Intersections between Urban Studies and Network Science’. NETS is a purposefully interdisciplinary journal devoted to the mathematical and numerical study of economic activities facilitated by human infrastructure networks. Papers for the proposed special issue, which will be guest-edited by Ben Derudder and Zachary Neal, should be methodologically focused, foregrounding the role of network and spatial analysis in the study of cities and city-systems. Submissions are welcome from now until 31 December 2017 at the very latest at https://www.editorialmanager.com/nets. When submitting a manuscript for this special issue, please be sure to observe the following title structure for your paper: “Urban Networks Special Issue: Actual Title” to ensure that it is correctly allocated in the editorial system. Prospective authors are strongly encouraged to share title/abstract with the guest editors via ben.derudder@ugent.be and zpneal@msu.edu before submitting a paper to check if the paper aligns with the special issue’s objectives.

IRLE’s Working Paper series brings preliminary works and new research from faculty and campus researchers to a broad audience for discussion and comments. Papers are made available on escholarship and IRLE’s website (where we can also host replication data). Please contact jankim@berkeley.edu to submit a paper.

CONFERENCES
C2ER/LMI Institute Annual Conference & Forum to be held June 6-8, 2018 in Atlanta, GA. We are currently soliciting session proposals related to the theme of the event – RISE: Resiliency, Innovation, Skills, and Equity in Regional Economic Research. With this theme, we want to capture a diverse range of research efforts that contribute to these important topics in the economic and workforce development fields. We encourage you to share the research you and your colleagues are doing, submit your proposal today! Submit your proposal online here. Only completed submissions via the survey tool will be considered. A survey must be completed for each proposal. Sessions must be centered on regional economic and/or workforce development research or the use of data to make economic and/or workforce development policy decisions. Sales or marketing sessions will not be considered. Proposals should reference how they relate to Resiliency, Innovation, Skills, and/or Equity in regional economic and workforce development research. Full panel sessions (usually of three presenters) are approximately 1 1/4 hours. Individual presentations are 15-20 minutes long. Session proposals are due at 5:00 pm EST on Friday, December 8, 2017.
FUNDING
Russell Sage Foundation is accepting letters of inquiry until November 30, 2017 at 2pm ET/11am PT in the following program areas: Future of Work, Social Inequality, Behavioral Economics, as well as for the special initiatives on Non-Standard Employment and The Social, Economic, and Political Effects of the Affordable Care Act. View all funding opportunities and application guidelines.

GRADUATE STUDENTS
Synar Graduate Research Fellowships. The Institute of Governmental Studies will award three of $3,000 each. The Mike Synar Graduate Research Fellowship is awarded to distinguished UC Berkeley graduate students who are writing their dissertations on an aspect of American politics, including comparative research across nations with the United States as a major case. To be eligible, graduate students must have advanced to candidacy. All award recipients will be invited to the award ceremony during the spring semester. For more information, visit: https://igs.berkeley.edu/student-learning/awards-grants/synar-fellowship. The due date is January 31, 2018.

WORKSHOPS
Genomics for Social Scientists workshop, held at the University of Michigan June 18-22, 2018. The purpose of this NIA-sponsored workshop is to familiarize researchers with genetic data and provide hands-on training on incorporating genetic information into social science analyses. Using both lecture and lab formats, participants will use tutorial versions of the Health and Retirement Study core survey data and genetic data files. The week-long workshop will offer a multitude of opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration among attendees and feedback from University of Michigan investigators and course instructors. This year’s guest speakers include: Pam Herd, Professor of Public Affairs and Sociology University of Wisconsin – Madison; Principal Investigator, Wisconsin Longitudinal Study; and Ben Domingue, Assistant Professor, Stanford. Organizers include Jessica Faul and Colter Mitchell. For more information on how to apply, available travel stipends, and curriculum, please visit: https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/genomics-workshop. Applications are due January 12, 2018.

Fragile Families Summer Data Workshop to be held July 11^th – 13^th, 2018, at Columbia University School of Social Work in New York City. Additional information about the Fragile Families study is available at: http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/. Additional workshop information, including application submission details, is available at: http://www.ffworkshop.columbia.edu/. Applications will be accepted until Friday, March 1, 2018 (11:59PM EST).

DATA

NEW IPUMS DATA: Several new notices from the IPUMS folks…

R: Let’s give a warm welcome to the ipumsr R package, which helps researchers use IPUMS data in R. The package imports data from microdata projects using the DDI file and NHGIS data from the csv extracts. It also makes it easy to use the value labels and other metadata provided with IPUMS, including the geographic boundary files. Look for R-related updates to our website soon!
CPS: The latest IPUMS-CPS data released include 2017 ASEC data, updated with tax and poverty variables, and basic monthly data through September 2017. Check our revisions page for added and corrected variables as well as other news.
USA: 2016 ACS 1-year data are available from IPUMS-USA. Look closely at changes in computer and internet access variables.
HEALTH SURVEYS: IPUMS Health Surveys released corrected and new data for the 2016 sample. The release included the corrected 2016 sampling weights, Imputed Income variables, and more than 200 variables from the 2016 supplements on Balance, Diabetes, Vision, and Tobacco and E-cigarette use.
TERRA: IPUMS Terra has recently released the following data:
*Climate Reference Unit Time Series data—Monthly climate data spanning 1901-2013.
*Additional microdata from IPUMS International—24 new samples, including 3 new countries.
*Additional second-level boundaries for 24 countries.
Together, the new climate data and finer-scale boundaries will enable detailed studies of changes in climate and human populations over time.
DHS: IPUMS-DHS has new variables on the environmental and social context of survey participants, calculated from sources outside the DHS. Data on physical environment, population, and agriculture are available as a downloadable CSV files for all DHS samples with GPS cluster data and through the extract system for countries included in the IPUMS-DHS database.

D-LAB
D-Lab sponsors workshops and training in courses, one-on-one consulting for faculty, grad students and undergraduates, and working groups of focuses topics. One-on-one consulting also available. For more information and registration, visit http://dlab.berkeley.edu.

JOBS
All jobs and postdoctoral fellowships are posted as we receive them on the Demography Department Jobs Listserv, http://lists.demog.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/jobs. This list advertises positions of all sorts relevant for social and behavioral scientists with advanced degrees.

MIGRATION MAILING LIST
Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI.berkeley.edu) is a research center for the study of immigrants and immigration. BIMI has a mailing list (immigration_group@lists.berkeley.edu), which is where a good deal of immigration and migration announcements are posted, and not all of that material is posted on the PopSciences Weekly News.