EAPS Council 2016-2018

According to the Statutes of EAPS, the Council shall consist of five (5) members : the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary-General/Treasurer and 2 ordinary members, all to be elected by secret ballot. The term of office for all members is 2 years. Note that the Vice-President will automatically succeed to the office of President (“President-elect”).

The current Council was elected by electronic ballot in June 2016. The Council took office at the 2016 General Assembly of EAPS which convened during the European Population Conference 2016 in Mainz, Germany on 1 September.

Bios of the Council

Zsolt Spéder

Zsolt Spéder is Director of the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute (since 1999), professor of sociology at the University of Pécs (since 2011) and founding head of the Doctoral School of Demography and Sociology at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Humanities.

During his research career he collaborated in several international projects and spent time in several internationally renowned research centres. He taught at the Corvinus University of Budapest and conducted research at the Collegium Budapest - Institute of Advanced Study, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, the Social Science Center Berlin (WZB), the Vienna Institute of Demography, the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED), and the Stockholm University Linnaeus Center on Social Policy and Family Dynamics in Europe. His Eisenhower Fellowship enabled him to visit several leading population studies centres at the United States (2003).

Zsolt focuses in his research on family formation and fertility, on social inequalities and poverty, and is a devoted scholar of longitudinal approaches. In many of his research projects he prefers international comparison. He is a founding member of the Generations and Gender Project (GGP). Currently using the Generation and Gender Survey, he is analysing the realisation of fertility intentions, and exploring the societal and political context of childbearing behaviour. He has published articles in a wide range of national and international journals in the field of population studies and sociology.

For many years Zsolt has served the community of demography and social sciences both at the national and international levels. He organised several workshops, middle range conferences and large international conferences including the European Population Conference 2014 in Budapest, referees articles for journals, research project applications and study programs in population studies and sociology. Currently he is member of the EAPS Council and President of the Demographic Committee, Division Economic and Legal Sciences, at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Jane Falkingham

Jane Falkingham is Professor of Demography & International Social Policy and Dean of the Faculty of Social & Human Sciences at the University of Southampton. She is also the Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change, whose remit is to ‘improve understanding of the drivers and consequences of population change both nationally and globally’. Jane pursues a multi-disciplinary research agenda, located at the interface between population studies and social policy and spanning both developed and developing countries. Much of her research over the past twenty years has focussed on the social policy implications of population change and the well-being of older people, with her research taking an explicitly life course approach. She is currently working with CPC colleagues on a programme of work focussing on understanding the dynamics of employment and informal care in mid-life and flows of intergenerational support.

In addition, Jane is currently involved in a number of research projects internationally including research on ageing and resilience in the slums of Nairobi and on migration and the well-being of children and older people ‘left behind’ in China. She previously worked extensively in Central Asia, providing advice to the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on the development of their Poverty Reduction Strategies. She has published more than 150 books, journal articles and book chapters, and supervised over 20 PhD students to successful completion.

Jane has a long history of service to the demography community both in the UK and internationally. She was a member of the working group responsible for drafting the research training guidelines for the newly established ESRC Demography panel, and subsequently a member of the panel for the research training recognition exercises. In addition she was also PI of a grant from the Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) - EU Cooperation Programme in Higher Education (EDULINK) which focused on strengthening the curricula in a network of Population Studies departments of three west African universities: the University of Ghana, the University of Ibadan and the University of Cape Coast. She has served as external Examiner for MSc Demography and Health at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (2004-2008), MSc Population Studies, University of Liverpool (2008-2010) and the MSc in Population Studies at the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS), at the University of Ghana (2009-2011). She is regularly invited to be a member of research funding panels and in February 2016 had the honour of being invited to chair the Odysseus Jury (Top Science in Flanders) for Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO). She is currently Chair of the European Population Information Centre, Population Europe and President of the British Society for Population Studies.

Jane is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).In October 2015 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to Social Sciences, receiving the honour from Prince William at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

Hill Kulu

Hill Kulu is Professor of Demography and Quantitative Geography at the University of Liverpool. He was trained in economic geography and demography at the Universities of Tartu and Helsinki; he received his PhD from the University of Helsinki in 1997. He has worked at the following organizations: University of Wisconsin-Madison (Post-doctoral fellow, 1999), University of Tartu (Researcher, 1997–1998; Senior researcher, 2000–2002) and the Max Planck Institute

for Demographic Research (Research scientist, 2003–2007; Leader of a research team, 2005–2007).

His substantive research interests lie in the field of family, migration and health studies; his methodological interests include the development and application of longitudinal models in demographic research. His research has advanced our understanding of how family changes and residential choices interact in people’s lives and how residential context shapes childbearing, migration and health behaviour of individuals. He has published 38 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and has edited two books published by international publishers. The total number of his publications is 140.

Hill Kulu is currently working on two large research projects. Changing Families and Sustainable Societies, a joint project of 25 European Universities and research institutes, is funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (2013–2017). Partner Relationships, Residential Relocations and Housing in the Life Course is a joint three-year (2014–2017) project of the Universities of Groningen, Liverpool and Cologne, funded by NWO, ESRC and DFG. He is supervising two post-doctoral researchers and seven PhD students.

Helga de Valk

Helga de Valk leads the theme group Migration and Migrants at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI, the Hague), is professor of Migration and the Life Course at Groningen University and professor at Interface Demography Free University Brussels (VUB, Belgium). She received her PhD from Utrecht University (2006). During and after her studies she has been an invited guest researcher/professor at several renowned institutes including the Graduate Center of City University New York, the Center for Demographic Research in Barcelona, Bocconi University Milan and the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst/Bremen.

Her research focuses on migration and integration, the transition to adulthood of immigrant youth, union and family formation, the second generation, intergenerational relationships in immigrant families, segregation and European mobility. Most of her work takes an international comparative perspective.

Among her recent projects are the ERC starting grant project “Families of migrant origin: a life course perspective” (Familife), the Urban Europe funded project on residential segregation across Europe (Ressegr) and the Norface funded “European welfare states in times of mobility” (MobileWelfare) project. She has published articles in a wide range of leading journals and books in the field of demography, migration and family sociology. She is acting editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Population (EJP) and was awarded the European Demography Award 2016.

Tomas Sobotka

Tomáš Sobotka leads the research group on Comparative European Demography at the Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences and Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Global Capital. He holds a PhD in demography from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands).

His research focuses on fertility in low-fertility settings, fertility data and measurement, population and family changes in Europe and assisted reproduction. Currently he is principal investigator in the European Research Council funded project analyzing fertility and reproduction in Europe in the early 21st century (EURREP, www.eurrep.org ). He has helped launching and expanding several data repositories, including the Human Fertility Database (HFD, www.humanfertility.org) and Human Fertility Collection (www.fertilitydata.org) and Cohort Fertility and Education (CFE) database (http://www.cfe-database.org/). (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/staff/staff_tomas_sobotka.shtml and www.eurrep.org ) .

Zsolt Spéder

Jane Falkingham

Helga de Valk

Tomas Sobotka