Capacity building and sharing expertise

Additional activities to achieve wider capacity building include offering short courses on new methodological tools and techniques, schools’ outreach, and mentoring. For example, in June 2021 and July 2022, colleagues based in LCDS held the Summer Institute in Computational Sciences; a partnership with Princeton, Duke, UCLA and Montréal Universities. The summer schools focus on training PGRs and ECRs. Topics covered include the advanced techniques used by colleagues in their CG research, such as web scraping, digital field experiments, machine learning, geospatial analysis, social networks and simulations, and agent-based modelling. The twoweek programme included research talks, government and industry speakers and group projects.

Professor Ann Berrington and Professor Athina Vlachantoni co-led a training workshop in September 2022 on mixed methods in longitudinal life course studies for researchers and ECRs from partner institutions of the YouthLife project. Professor Berrington was also a mentor at the postgraduate and early career mentoring session for PhD and ECR attendees at the BSPS Conference 2022, enabling them to meet demographers and learn more about career opportunities.

In October 2022, Dr Joanne Ellison, Professor Ann Berrington, Professor Jakub Bijak, Dr Sarah Christison, Professor Eren Dodd, Dr Bernice Kuang and Professor Hill Kulu hosted two free half-day virtual workshops on Fertility Analysis and Projection. Attendees included members of national and local government statistics departments, social and demographic researchers, and others interested in understanding how to analyse fertility trends and make projections.

To share their expertise and knowledge with the wider scientific and policy communities, Connecting Generations Senior Management Team members have been appointed to a number of influential roles:

Professor Jane Falkingham is Chair of the ESRC Centre for Longitudinal Studies Board; a member of the Academy of Social Sciences Audit and Risk Committee; and a member of the UKRI ADR UK Delivery Board.

Professor Hill Kulu has been the President of the European Association of Population Studies (EAPS) for the 2022-2024 Council. He is also a member of the Expert Advisory Group on Population and Migration at the Scottish Government.

Professor Melinda Mills is a Special Advisor to Paolo Gentiloni, the European Commissioner of the Economy; an executive committee member for the Consortium on Analytics for Data-Driven Decision-making (CAnD3); an advisory board member for the Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations (ODDISEI); and was a panel chair for the 2022 ERC synergy grants for social sciences and humanities.

Professor Ann Berrington is a member of the ESRC Data and Infrastructure, Skills and Methods Expert Advisory Group.

Dr David McCollum is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, and a member of the International Advisory Board of Population, Space and Place.

Professor Athina Vlachantoni acted as Vice-Chair of the 2022 Review Committee for the National Centre of Social Research in Greece.