Be sure to join us after the Thanksgiving break on Wednesday, December 3rd, 12pm, for our end of the year ‘Population Sciences Lunch,’ co-hosted by BPC and CEDA, held in our seminar room, 310 Social Sciences. Come gather with your community of population researchers. You are all invited, and lunch will be provided. Just bring yourselves!
Featured affiliate research of the week: Place Effects and Geographic Inequality in Health at Birth. Eric Chyn and Na’ama Shenhav. (2025). American Economic Journal: Economic Policy vol. 17(4): 260–91.
See further announcements and opportunities below.
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EVENTS
(next week)
December 1 | 2-3:30pm | Sociology Department Colloquium Series | Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Associate Professor of Sociology, Brown University. “Crime Fiction: How Racist Lies Built a System of Wrongful Conviction.” 402 Social Sciences Building, and zoom.
December 2 | 12:10-1pm | Public Health Research Series | Laura Balzer, Associate Professor in Residence of Biostatistics, UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “Machine Learning to Improve Community Health in East Africa.” More information here.
FUNDING
The Society of Family Planning. Bridging investments in abortion and contraception research. The purpose of this grant is to support the completion or partial completion of terminated NIH grants focused on abortion and/or contraception in the US. We invite proposals with budgets up to $100,000 that can be completed within 24 months. We anticipate supporting five grants in 2025 and five grants in 2026. The funding opportunity will close when the funds for the given year are exhausted. Proposals may be submitted on a rolling basis and will be evaluated monthly. Learn more here.
Russell Sage Foundation – Social, Political and Economic Inequality Research Grants.
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. We seek innovative investigator-initiated research that will expand our understanding of social, political, and economic inequalities and the mechanisms by which they influence the lives of individuals, families, and communities. We welcome projects that explore the relevance of economic, racial, ethnic, age, gender, immigration, residence, or other statuses for the distribution of social, political, and economic outcomes within and across different status groups.
RSF prioritizes analyses that make use of newly available data or demonstrate novel uses of existing data. We support original data collection when a project is focused on important program priorities, projects that conduct survey or field experiments and qualitative studies. RSF encourages methodological variety and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Proposed projects must have well-developed conceptual frameworks and rigorous research designs. Analytical models must be well-specified and research methods must be appropriate. Award amount: $200,000
Deadline to apply: March 11, 2026. See the request for proposals.
Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant. The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. We accept applications two times per year. This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or location. Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education. Due December 15, 2025. Learn more here.
CART Fund: Alzheimer’s disease exploratory and developmental research projects. The goal of CART is to encourage exploratory and developmental Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) research projects within the United States by providing support for the early and conceptual plans of those projects that may not yet be supported by extensive preliminary data but have the potential to substantially advance biomedical research. This proposal should be distinct from those projects designed to increase knowledge in a well-established area unless it is intended to extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications. Our Review Team of distinguished neurodegenerative disease researchers is looking for “the best science that is most promising for leading to better diagnoses and/or treatment.” The CART Fund invites interested applicants from within the United States only to submit a Letter-of-Intent (LOI) that includes sufficient detail to communicate the importance of your study as well as information on its feasibility. Proposals should be distinct from those projects designed to increase knowledge in a well-established area unless it is intended to extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications. Applications may encompass a project period of up to two years with a combined budget for direct costs up to $500,000. No indirect costs are allowed. Full-time faculty (or the equivalent status) at US-based public and private institutions, such as universities, colleges, hospitals and laboratories are eligible. This is for NEW projects only. Applications will be deemed ineligible from for-profit and organizations outside of the United States, as well as those already supported by regular or program grants. Letter of Intent due December 5, 2025. Learn more here.
Henry P. David Grant for International Travel in Human Reproductive Behavior and Population Studies. The American Psychological Foundation’s Henry David Fund was established to support young psychologists with a demonstrated interest in the behavioral aspects of human reproductive behavior or an area related to population concerns.
Deadline: February 13, 2026. Amount: 1 grant of $1,500. Learn more here.
UC Berkeley’s Foundation Relations and Corporate Philanthropy Office keeps an active list of foundation funding opportunities.
OPPORTUNITIES
Summer Research Visit – Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is inviting applications from qualified and highly motivated students for a Summer Research Visit. The goal of the Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program is to enable discovery by bringing together data scientists and population scientists to work on focused, intensive and collaborative projects of broad societal relevance. For a period of 3 months (June 8th – August 21st, 2026) participating students will work in small teams, with support from experienced mentors, towards a common research goal. Learn more and apply.
CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, WEBINARS
16th Supercentenarian Seminar. Paris/Aubervilliers, France, 9-10 April 2026. The 16th Supercentenarian Seminar, organized by the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), will be held on April 9-10, 2026, at the Campus Condorcet (Aubervilliers). The seminar will address aspects such as the validation of extreme-age records, leading causes of death at advanceD ages, geographical patterns of exceptional longevity, and indicators for measuring mortality at extreme ages. Please submit your proposals to: super100_seminar2026@listes.ined.fr no later than December 20, 2025. For more information, please visit the webpage.
10th World Bank Urbanization and Development Conference. March 30-31, 2026, Washington, DC. This year’s Urbanization and Development Conference will explore how cities shape the creation and transformation of jobs and firms in developing economies. As technological change, demographic transitions, and structural shifts redefine the future of work, the conference invites research that deepens our understanding of how urban economies can drive economic growth and job creation. Read more about the call for papers and submit by December 8, 2025.
Beyond the PUMA: Supplemental Geography in ACS Microdata from IPUMS USA
Wednesday, December 10; 1:00-2:00pm CT. 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. Register here.
I-GUIDE VCO: Introduction to Mapping and Visualizing Social Data with R
Wednesday, December 3; 11:00am CT. We are alerting IPUMS users to an upcoming webinar from the National Science Foundation’s Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (I-GUIDE). The webinar will focus on utilizing the R Spatial Notebooks project to develop reproducible workflows for creating maps and other visualizations of open-source social and spatial data sources, including IPUMS. Attendees will gain experience with commonly used mapping and visualization packages. All skill-levels and backgrounds are welcome. Register here.
The Lifespan, Policy, and Health Lab & the Center for Research on Inequality and Health invite submissions for the interdisciplinary conference “Cognitive Aging and Dementia in Policy Contexts: Life Course Perspectives,” to be held at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN) on May 28-29, 2026. We welcome research from diverse disciplines and methodological approaches, including but not limited to: (1) Longitudinal and life course analyses of cognitive health; (2) Policy-focused research and natural experiments; (3) Demographic and epidemiological studies of inequality in cognitive aging; (4) Projects translating research into practice or policy; (5) Studies of early-life conditions, family structures, caregiving, and cross-national perspectives.
Submission Guidelines
– Submit an extended abstract of 1,200–1,500 words (excluding references) or a full paper.
– Submissions should clearly state the research question, data and methods, key findings, and policy relevance.
– Include a brief author bio (2–3 sentences) and indicate whether the presenting author is a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career scholar.
– Submissions will be reviewed by the organizing committee, with attention to quality, interdisciplinarity, policy relevance, and balance across topics.
Timeline.
Submission deadline: December 31, 2025
Notification of acceptance: February 15, 2026
Conference dates: May 28–29, 2026
Funding and Support. Lodging and meals will be covered for all participants. Airfare support will be available for early-career participants based on need.
How to Submit. Please submit your extended abstract or paper using this Google Form: forms.gle/4aJfo8S7vcd4ntqaA.
For questions, please email: lifespan-lab@vanderbilt.edu.