Amazing and heartwarming to see a packed crowd of people last week eager to grow the demography community at UofT and Canada more broadly 🫶 Huge thanks to all our guest speakers, the support of @uoftsociology.bsky.social and to my fellow co-leads @leafiaye.bsky.social and @joannapepin.bsky.social

One of the recommendations: @rohanalexander.bsky.social ‘s book

hope to see your work, especially in the realm of caregiving and/or LGBTQ+ kinship!

Look what we're up to @uoftsociology.bsky.social!

We are building a new pop center at UofT and will hold our first mini-conference on Nov 6 - come join us!! Exhibit 1: amazing speaker line-up - featuring friends around the world to discuss why demography/pop center matters! 🤓 Exhibit 2: the iconic castle where this conference will take place 🏰 ✨

The Toronto Population Network is holding a conference on 6 November at Hart House at UofT. Keynote from @ridhikashyap.bsky.social! If you're in Toronto come along and help us build the community of demographers and population researchers here! Registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/toronto-po...

Very excited to announce that @srhayford.bsky.social, @lesja.bsky.social, and I will be guest-editing a special volume of @prpr-journal.bsky.social on "Contemporary Pronatalism in Demographic Context"! Submissions due March 1, 2026. link.springer.com/collections/...

🚨New Tenure Position! We're looking for a new colleague to join our dynamic team in Belgium. Innovative quantitative methods | Health & environment | Population dynamics Read job description here: jobs.uclouvain.be/PersonnelAca... Application Deadline: Nov 11, 2025 #job #tenure

We are hiring! We are inviting applications for the Chapman Fellowship in Statistics at Imperial College London. This is a kind of super-postdoc: 3 years contract, excellent working conditions, and candidates are expected to propose an independent research plan. www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs//search...

UofT grad students - help advance social policy's media presence! Pitch us an opinion piece on social policy. If approved, you'll earn $500 for the completed piece. More info: cgsp-cpsm.ca/2025/09/22/c...

I'm super excited to announce that ISBA @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has voted to start a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences! It will be a great way to further collaborations with many disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities. bss-isba.github.io

The new Bayesian Social Sciences section of @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has just been created: bss-isba.github.io. The committee is myself as chair, @robinryder.bsky.social, chair elect from 2027, @nialfriel.bsky.social, program chair, @monjalexander.bsky.social, Treasurer, EJWagenmakers, Secretary.

The data is now available for all teams who've already signed up! More sign-ups very welcome! Happy analysing! 💻📊

A really great presentation from @phbocquier.bsky.social yesterday! The recording is up for those interested: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C_R...

Come and check out our next Formal Demography Working Group meeting with @phbocquier.bsky.social ! Sign up on our website to receive the link. If you have an ideia/paper/ work in progress you would like to present please feel free to reach out to us! formaldemography.github.io/working_group/

The next Formal Demography Working Group is Thursday September 11 at 10am ET! @phbocquier.bsky.social will present on identifying small-area diffusion of mortality transitions using non-linear modelling. Sign up details on our website! formaldemography.github.io/working_group/

Health demographers 📣 Calling for submissions to our w. @timriffe1.bsky.social Healthy Life Expectancy methodology collection on @genus.bsky.social! We're seeking innovative approaches to statistical modelling and empirical analysis of health inequalities 📈 📆 Submission deadline: 01/06/26 🔗 Link 👇

🚨Open Positions!🚨 Postdoc/Research Scientist Positions Migration | Population Dynamics | Computational Demography Application Deadline: Oct 10, 2025 See job description here: www.demogr.mpg.de/en/career_61... #Postdoc #Jobs @ezagheni.bsky.social @perrottadaniela.bsky.social @ugobas.bsky.social

📢 Interested in excess mortality methods, and want a challenge? I'm organising the "One Epidemic, Many Estimates" (1EME) project! Register *now* as a many analyst team (submissions due 15 March 2026), and then join us at LSE for a workshop on 21-22 May 2026! (1/n) www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-His...

🚨 New Job Alert! 🚨 Join Dr @ewabatyra.bsky.social as a Postdoc Researcher in Demography! Contribute to a global study on disparities in reproductive behaviour, focusing on childbearing age & fertility levels 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Apply now 👉 www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/event/postdo...

Job alert! Join us at @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social as a postdoctoral fellow to work on your own research for three years. #sociology

GPT-5 regularly asks you why you are not citing its work. GPT-5 always believes your estimator is biased. GPT-5 has more of a comment than a question. Sometimes GPT-5 tells you stories about grad school and expresses regret about getting a PhD. GPT-5's mom wonders when it will start making money.

Average mortality rates are a horrible measure of typical mortality during the first weeks of life. On the day of birth modal mortality is 189 times lower than average mortality. Read more in my recent piece on selection in neonatal mortality.

Political Science at Western University, Canada is searching for three tenure track assistant professors. There are two ads, one in International Politics (IR or comparative) and one in Comparative or Canadian. Ads are here: www.uwo.ca/facultyrelat...

The wonderful Niamh Cahill is recruiting a PhD student (co-supervised by me!) to work on estimating and projecting population exposure to extreme sea levels. Please contact me if interested!

🚨 Job alert: The Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto is hiring an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-... I'll be at ASA and would be happy to chat with interested candidates. Please share widely! #Socsky

There are also a few really good demographic methods instructors who have all or nearly all their materials - including slides and readings - online, including: grodri.github.io and www.ernestoamaral.com/soci633-25sp... and github.com/MJAlexander/... (last one is @monjalexander.bsky.social )

🧮 A new preprint of my first dissertation chapter "From disparate lists to population estimates: A multiple systems estimation workflow for mortality analysis in conflict settings” is now online. doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Just posted the recording of @hggaddy.bsky.social's talk on Challenges in Estimating Crisis Mortality, you can check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCNI...

Mifepristone is one of the most studied, safest medications in use today — over 20 years, 100+ studies, millions of patients. Attacks on mifepristone aren’t science — they’re ideology. Let doctors and patients lead, not politics.

Reach out if you would like to present your work and discuss with other folks that are into formal demography 🤓👇 you can just fill out this form: 🔗 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... formaldemography.github.io/working_grou...

It´s happening and @hggaddy.bsky.social is discussing, among other issues, how temporal disaggregation for time series analysis of mortality is a solution for a need for spatial disaggregation - which creates death toll underestimation!

Monash University has made many positions available specifically for young and early career researchers who would like to take some time away from the USA. These are case by case, not advertised. So if you are interested or know anyone interested have them get in contact with someone at Monash.

Reminder that the Formal Demography Working Group is meeting tomorrow! Sign up to receive Zoom details: formaldemography.github.io/working_group/

Thanks to NSERC for funding an alliance between @theijf.org and the Faculty of Information at @uoft.bsky.social for the next five years. (A great group of Canadian summer students has already been funded from this!) ischool.utoronto.ca/news/decodin...

Open call for Associate Editors at our journal!! To find out more about requirements and application procedures 👀 here www.demographic-research.org/files/Call_f...

Great to see that maternal and child health is a key priority for Gates moving forward: www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-pa...

U of T announcing a new dean?

😀We are back! Check out @hggaddy.bsky.social talking about challenges in estimating crisis mortality at the formal dempgraphy working group meeting! Super excited to resume activities alongside @monjalexander.bsky.social ! Sign up at formaldemography.github.io/working_group/ 👇

Hey demographers! We're starting up the formal demography working group again! Next Friday 16 May at 11:30am ET @hggaddy.bsky.social will talk to us about challenges in estimating crisis mortality. Excited! Head to the website to sign up for Zoom details: formaldemography.github.io/working_group/

📢New paper out on measuring global #migration flows using online data in @pnas.org We use privacy-protected records from over 3 billion Facebook users to estimate migration flows between 181 countries, accounting for biases in social media usage 🔗https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409418122

well, why not buttondown.com/lesliejroot

I understand uber-nerds are not the median voter, but sad the Liberal party isn't offering (some variant that doesn't impinge copyright) these!

Let this be a warning to you all: nobody steals my charts and gets to be Prime Minister of Canada

Important study led by @mathewkiang.com

Really useful primer, and also includes this major contribution to the literature

A useful explainer with some very enjoyable subheadings:

A couple of days ago I gave a guest lecture on an Introduction to Bayesian Demography. The materials are here if people are interested! Includes a few examples using R and Stan: mjalexander.github.io/bayesian-dem...

Words to live by

NEW: In agency after agency, the U.S. government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of policies. By @alecmac.bsky.social