Monica Alexander

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.

Faculty (UWOFA) Western University, in vibrant London, Ontario, delivers an academic and student experience second to none.

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!

A picture of the toronto skyline

🚨 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...

YouTube video by Formal Demography Formal demography working group meeting 11

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...

ACOG Leads Amicus Brief Calling Mifepristone Conclusively Safe and Effective The amicus brief outlines the overwhelming evidence demonstrating that mifepristone—which has undergone rigorous testing and review and has been safely used in the United States for 23 years—is conclu...

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/

Adam and Wil with Tripod doing song-in-an-hour

Decoding Canada's data: LLMs learn the language of political transparency  - Faculty of Information While governments in Canada generate a wealth of data that could prove helpful to citizens, policymakers and journalists alike, accessing this information has proven to be a major challenge, sometimes...

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...

No time to die

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...

Screenshot of Gates funding priorities

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

me too 🧐

Yeah you do

Leslie Root I yell about pronatalism.

well, why not buttondown.com/lesliejroot

Black shirt with "Govern in econometrics" printed and a man with a furrowed brow saying "No you can't just run a regression!"

Green shirt with "Govern in econometrics" printed and a normal distribution

Grey shirt with "Govern in econometrics" printed and a man with a furrowed brow in front of a Texas looking flag (annoyingly it wouldn't change it to a Canadian one) saying "reg y x, robust"

Black shirt with "Govern in econometrics" printed and a red maple leaf and "reg y x, robust" underneath

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

where my aging millennials at

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

A useful explainer with some very enjoyable subheadings: