The Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC) at Brown University, formally established in 1965, is an internationally respected demography research and training center offering an outstanding interdisciplinary graduate training program. Research interests include social demography, economic demography, anthropological demography, and population health. ____________________________________________________________________________

New Faculty Associates! The PSTC is pleased to welcome several new faculty associates who are joining Brown in the summer of 2008.  We provide here brief biographies of each. Margot Jackson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, comes to Brown from social demography training at the California Center for Population, UCLA.  Jackson will defer her arrival for one year to complete a NICHD post-doctoral appointment at Princeton’s Office of Population Research.  Her expertise includes population health, stratification, and contextual methods.  She will also affiliate with Brown’s Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4) initiative. Jessica Leinaweaver, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2005, and has served two years as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. Her research has contributed to the recent reshaping of anthropological kinship studies, focusing on the ways that children are relocated and families reproduced in Peru. Her forthcoming book is The Circulation of Children: Kinship, Mobility and Morality in Ayacucho (Duke University Press).  Dr. Leinaweaver teaches on the subjects of social organization, gender, childhood, and Latin America as well as an introduction to cultural anthropology. Sriniketh Nagavarapu, Assistant Professor of Economics, is receiving his PhD in Economics from Stanford University.  He will bring to PSTC and Brown complementary interests and skills in applied microeconomics, labor economics, and environmental studies.  As a member of PSTC’s growing thematic area in population-environment interactions, he will bring his expertise in the analysis of the effects of development and growth on Brazilian deforestation through planting for ethanol. Michelle Poulin, Postdoctoral Fellow, received her PhD in Sociology from Boston University in 2006, and has spent two years as a Population Aging Research Center Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.  Her dissertation explored strategies for AIDS prevention among young people in Malawi; more broadly, her expertise includes gender and the family, and the use of mixed-methods approaches.  Leah Van Wey will join Brown as Associate Professor of Sociology, core faculty of the Environmental Change Initiative, and a faculty associate of the PSTC.   Van Wey comes to Brown from Indiana University, Bloomington.  Her work examines migration, land use, and household livelihoods in developing country settings, most notably Brazil.  Her research incorporates multiple methods including quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data.  She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill in 2001. _________________________________________

PSTC Faculty Associates Receive Award for New Survey Methodology David Lindstrom and Dennis Hogan have been awarded an R03 grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Their project, “Analyzing the Effectiveness of a Non-Verbal Response Card: Evidence from Ethiopia,” will examine the effectiveness of a new response method for soliciting responses to sensitive questions. This method, which was recently piloted by the investigators in southwestern Ethiopia, increases the level of privacy and confidentiality in an interviewer-administered survey, and makes minimal cognitive demands on the respondent. For more on the PSTC’s research in Ethiopia, please see the project website. _________________________________________

PSTC Faculty Associate Studies Disease Burden of S. japonicum PSTC faculty associate Stephen McGarvey is senior scientist on a study examining the burden of schistosomiasis japonica. He and his colleagues find that the disease burden of schistosomiasis, a parasitic flatworm infection, is far greater than previously estimated. Results of this study appear in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases here. Read more from the Brown News Service here. _________________________________________

Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, Box 1836, 68 Waterman Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02912
phone (401) 863-2668 fax (401) 863-3351 Population_Studies@Brown.edu