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Digital illustration of a glowing world map in shades of blue, overlaid with interconnected data points, network lines and demographic charts, representing digital demography, artificial intelligence and global population research. Made by ChatGPT.

A new scientific panel established by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) will bring together researchers from around the world to explore how artificial intelligence and digital technologies are transforming demographic research. 

The Scientific Panel on Digital Demography, AI and Open Science, launched on 1 November 2026 and running until November 2030, brings together international experts to advance rigorous, responsible and equitable approaches to digital and computational demography.

Co-chaired by Professor Aliakbar Akbaritabar of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the University of Rostock, and Dr Francesco Rampazzo of the University of Manchester, the panel will explore how artificial intelligence, digital platforms and emerging data sources are changing both demographic behaviour and the ways researchers study population processes.

As members of the international steering committee, two researchers from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, Professors Charles Rahal and Ridhi Kashyap will contribute their expertise in computational social science and demographic research to the panel's activities.

Building on previous IUSSP panels on digital and computational demography, the initiative will focus on three main priorities:

  • Understanding how digital transformation and AI are changing demographic processes and research.
  • Developing robust and adaptable methods for rapidly evolving digital environments.
  • Promoting open, reproducible and equitable demographic research.

Topics of interest include:

  • The validation of digital trace data and the correction of its biases, including contamination by AI-generated content.
  • Uncertainty quantification.
  • Microsimulation.
  • Agent-based modelling and simulation-based inference.
  • Privacy-preserving methods such as synthetic populations and differential privacy.
  • The use of large language models and agentic AI in demographic research with human oversight. 

The panel will also promote open and reproducible research and address data justice, including unequal access to data, computing and AI infrastructure across world regions, the linguistic biases of AI models, and the ethics of using digital traces.

The panel plans to organise webinars, training workshops, conference sessions and early-career mentorship opportunities, beginning with an online launch webinar in 2027.

Find out more about the panel and its upcoming activities on the IUSSP website.

Steering committee

  • Daniel Ciganda (Universidad de la República, Uruguay) 
  • Elizabeth Jacobs (University of Connecticut) 
  • Ridhi Kashyap (University of Oxford)
  • Julie Sojin Kim (Stanford University)
  • Christina Pao (University of South Carolina)
  • Charles Rahal (University of Oxford)
  • Francisco Rowe (University of Liverpool)
  • Boyam Fabrice Yameogo (Université Lédéa Bernard Ouédraogo, Burkina Faso) 
  • Dilek Yildiz (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, IIASA) 
  • Vissého Adjiwanou (Université du Québec à Montréal) serves as the panel’s liaison to the IUSSP Council.

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