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Contact: Jon Meerdink, [email protected]

ANN ARBOR – The Institute for Social Research welcomed guests to a reception at the Population Association of America’s (PAA) annual meeting on April 7, marking the first time ISR has hosted such a gathering. ISR Director Kathleen Cagney and Population Studies Center (PSC) Director Sarah Burgard hosted about 150 guests for food and conversation during the conference.

Among the attendees were three past presidents of the PAA, in addition to numerous researchers and students who had studied at Michigan or worked at ISR before heading on to other assignments.

The PSC prioritizes programs geared toward producing the next generation of social scientists. Some of PSC’s core training initiatives are dedicated to building the statistical and demographic techniques crucial to the field, and the center’s Doctoral Training Program in Demography & Population Studies provides apprenticeship training and fellowship support to PhD students interested in sociology, economics, public health, and anthropology. This event, held at one of the field’s premier conferences, dovetailed perfectly with those goals and initiatives.

“The PAA annual meeting is a great opportunity for social researchers from many different disciplines to connect,” Cagney said. “We were thrilled with the attendance at our reception, which we are now convinced should be an annual event. We look forward to future meetings and continuing to build relationships among researchers from all the excellent institutions that participate in PAA.”

A similar gathering had been planned for the 2020 PAA conference, but had to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ISR maintained an active presence at the conference this year; ISR researchers were involved in 47 different presentations in a variety of roles through the four day annual meeting.