As the federal government shutdown enters its third week, the PAA Office of Government Affairs, along with the PAA/APC Committee on Government and Public Affairs (GPAC), is monitoring developments and engaging with coalition partners in Washington, DC, including the Consortium of Social Science Associations, to address the problems this latest funding lapse has caused. If you are experiencing any adverse impacts (i.e. funding delays, canceled workshops, etc.) as a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown, please share your examples with the PAA Office of Government Affairs via our “Impacts Portal” (which was initially created earlier this year to collect examples of terminated awards).
We also encourage you to share examples of research activities, including data collection (by your team or others), being negatively affected as a result of the shutdown. Sharing these examples will help the PAA Office of Government Affairs and GPAC more effectively advocate for a timely, thoughtful resolution to the current crisis. Please feel free to contact Mary Jo Mitchell, Director, PAA Office of Government Affairs, if you have any questions.
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On October 28th, the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) will host its annual Evidence to Action (E2A) symposium at the Brower Center in Berkeley. This year’s E2A 2025, Fighting Hunger in the New Foreign Aid Landscape, will showcase how evidence-based programs that deliver agricultural services and social assistance are protecting food security and livelihoods for marginalized populations in low- and middle-income countries, even as traditional funding models shift. See the full agenda and register.
This week’s Brownbag Seminar on Wednesday, October 15th, 12pm is with Kriti Vikram, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, who will present “Age at Marriage and Women’s Health Over the Life Course in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.” 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.
NIH OBSSR Director’s Webinar: How Responsible Use of Mobile Device Data Can Advance Our Understanding of Fertility. For millions of Americans, the pathway to parenthood includes conception failure and miscarriage. These experiences are difficult to capture in administrative or clinical data and therefore are difficult to study in populations. Indeed, much of what we know about variation in conception and miscarriage is shaped by how we have studied them. New forms of mobile device data provide a rare window into early pregnancy in large populations. In this talk, Dr. Nobles will discuss how pregnancy success is sensitive to social, economic, and environmental exposures and that our understanding of these relationships can be advanced significantly through the responsible use of mobile device data. Understanding the upstream drivers of pregnancy success has implications for how we interpret, support, and reduce infertility and miscarriage. Join Jenna Nobles, Professor of Demography, University of California, Berkeley, for this webinar on Wednesday, October 22nd, at 11:00 am ET. See details and register.
Featured affiliate research of the week: Effects of school meals on nutrition: Evidence from the start of the school year. 2025. Marianne Bitler, Janet Currie, Hilary Hoynes, Krista Ruffini, Lisa Schulkind, and Barton Willage. Food Policy 134, 102901.
See further announcements and opportunities below.
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EVENTS
October 14 | 12:10-1pm | UC Berkeley School of Public Health | Veronica Miller, PhD, is an Adjunct Professor at Berkeley Public Health and Director of the Forum for Collaborative Research. “Biomarker Validation as Surrogate Endpoints for Drug Approval.” Online only. Event details.
October 15 | 12-1:05pm | UC Berkeley Demography Seminar Series | Kriti Vikram, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. “Age at Marriage and Women’s Health Over the Life Course in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.” 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. The event will take place in Room 310 in the Social Sciences Building and will also be available via zoom. Meeting ID: 985 2901 0198 Password: DEMOG_BB Full event details are here.
October 15 | 4:10-5:30pm | UC Berkeley School of Information | Preslav Nakov, Department Chair and Professor of Natural Language Processing at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. “Factuality Challenges in the Era of Large Language Models.” 202 South Hall. Event details here.
FUNDING
Wellcome Trust Mental Health Award: Mental Health Award: Transforming Early Intervention for Anxiety, Depression and Psychosis in Young People. Funding for projects that robustly test the real-world effectiveness and assess implementation strategies of scalable transformative early interventions for anxiety, depression and psychosis in young people. Award amount: £200,000 for the Foundation Phase and £5 million to £8 million for the Impact Phase. Foundation Phase application deadline: November 11 2025. Learn more.
Call for Proposals: J-PAL’s Social Policy Research Initiative. The J-PAL North America Social Policy Research Initiative (SPRI), is calling for randomized evaluations that contribute to J-PAL’s mission to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by rigorous evidence. This could include randomized evaluations across a broad range of sectors including but not limited to education; climate; energy and the environment; housing and homelessness; and labor. Proposals related to crime and health, may be better aligned with J-PAL North America’s Initiative for Effective US Crime Policy and US Health Care Delivery Initiative RFPs. Full research projects are typically awarded $150,000 to $250,000, with a maximum budget of $400,000. Deadline: January 6, 2026. Learn more.
OPPORTUNITIES
Expressions of Interest. The Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS), Oxford Population Health, invites expressions of interest from outstanding early-career researchers who wish to apply for the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships 2026. The Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships provide career development opportunities for talented researchers who have not yet held a full-time permanent academic post. Fellows are expected to undertake a significant piece of independent research, supported by the host institution. Expressions of interest can be submitted here. The submission deadline is December 15, 2025.
Call for New Program Reviewers and Consultants. The American Sociological Association (ASA) invites applications for training as an American Sociological Association Program Reviewer and Consultant. ASA Program Reviewers and Consultants are a group of well-trained and highly respected teachers, scholars, and leaders who are available to serve as external reviewers, consultants, and mentors for sociology departments throughout the country. For more information on how to apply, see here.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Studies in Family Planning has issued an open call for proposals for a special issue on current and emerging topics in sexual and reproductive health research. We seek guest editors (researchers, scholars, and practitioners) who can develop innovative issues that advance knowledge, foster scholarly dialogue, and contribute to evidence-based practice and policy. Deadline to submit proposals: December 1, 2025. More information here.
Special Issue of Population Research and Policy Review: Contemporary Pronatalism in Demographic Context. Low and declining birth rates across the world have consequences for countries’ population size and structure. Concerns over the potential economic effects of population aging have spurred many countries to engage in efforts to raise birth rates. At the same time, there is growing concern about the social and cultural causes and consequences of low birth rates. Pronatalism – an ideology based on the belief that birth rates are too low, and societies should work to raise them in the interest of economic productivity and cultural preservation – has re-emerged as an increasingly visible and powerful force across different settings. The dynamics of low fertility – such as fertility decline, postponement, and changing patterns of family formation – have been common topics in population science over the last 25 years, but pronatalism has received considerably less attention from the field.
This Special Issue will provide an opportunity for population scientists to contribute to the conversations about pronatalism throughout the world. We welcome critical, theoretical, descriptive, and empirical submissions that explicitly focus on some aspect of pronatalism. Further research is needed on the evidentiary base upon which pronatalism rests; the social, political, and cultural inspirations and implications of pronatalism; and the support for, and effects of, pronatalist policies. Evaluation of alternative approaches (besides raising birth rates) for addressing changes in population size and composition is also warranted. Submissions that discuss the causes and consequences of low fertility but do not directly engage with pronatalism fall outside of the scope of this issue. Deadline: March 1, 2026. Read the call.
Special Issue of Gender & Society on “Global Fault Lines: Gender, Religion, and Nationalism,” co-edited by Fauzia Husain (Queen’s University) and Rachel Rinaldo (University of Colorado Boulder). You can find the full details of the issue here.