News

A study led by Dr Jasmin Abdel Ghany, and including several LCDS associated researchers, provides new evidence that 
rising temperatures can influence the sex ratio at birth, with important implications for population health and gender 
balance in a warming world.

Two new publications by Dr Mary Roberts (Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science) shed new light on how social inequalities shape the experiences of people living with kidney disease in the United States — from long-term treatment pathways to donor’s willingness to donate.

Two recent publications by Sander Wagner (Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science) provide new evidence on how becoming a mother affects women’s careers, and why these effects matter for gender inequality more broadly. Both studies draw on large-scale administrative labour market data from France and Germany that were harmonised by the authoring team under a DFG–ANR research grant, with the aim of making cross-national research using administrative records more feasible.

A new pre-print by LCDS researchers Robert Campbell and Melinda Mills investigates the potential health side effects of drugs that target the GLP-1 receptor, a class of medications increasingly used to treat diabetes and obesity.

Dr. Joshua Wilde of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science was extensively quoted in a recent New York Times Headway newsletter examining declining birth rates across the United States and other high-income countries. The piece situates these trends within broader social and economic contexts, emphasising how decisions about whether, when, and how many children to have are shaped as much by structural conditions as by personal choice.

The LCDS will host a seminar by Dr Alejandro Espinosa-Rada, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven (Belgium). The event will take place on Monday 16 February 2026, 2:00–3:00 pm in the Butler Room, Nuffield College. 

We’re very excited to announce that Professor Jakub Bijak joins the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS) as Professor of Demographic Science — in a joint appointment with Reuben College, University of Oxford — starting 1 February 2026. 

The LCDS will welcome Mahesh Venkat Karra, Associate Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, for an upcoming seminar exploring new experimental evidence on the wider impacts of family planning access on women and children’s lives. The seminar will take place in the Butler Room, Nuffield College, 2:00-3:00pm on Monday 9th February. 

We are delighted to announce the first seminar of the term in the LCDS seminar series, to be delivered by Professor Prabhat Jha, Head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health, on Tuesday 3 February at 2 pm. While a formal title for the seminar will be confirmed shortly, this event marks an important start to our academic programme for the Spring Term.