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November 14, 2025 | News | New Faces at MPIDR
Aysha Basheer joins the team of the Laboratory of Migration and Mobility at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). Aysha comes to MPIDR from the University of Manchester, where she is working toward her PhD in Social Statistics. Her thesis focuses on data-driven approaches to estimate and forecast human migration, specifically using Bayesian methods to understand patterns and determinants of migration flows.
She holds a bachelor's and master’s degree in mathematics from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune. Following her studies, she worked as a research fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. more
November 11, 2025 | News | Overview
Here is an overview of the latest reading recommendations for papers published by scientists at the MPIDR. more
November 05, 2025 | News | Research Funding
Mikko Myrskylä, the director of the MPIDR and professor at the University of Helsinki, and his colleagues, Wolfgang Lutz, the founding director of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography, Mirkka Danielsbacka, professor at the University of Turku, and Anna Rotkirch, research professor at Family Federation of Finland, will receive six million euros over the next six years to do research on population projections for migration scenarios, human capital development, and sustainable integration (MigScene). more
October 29, 2025 | News | Marriage or Separation
Scientists have developed a model to analyze transitions from non-marital cohabitation to either marriage or separation considering two-time scales simultaneously: the age of the individuals and the duration of the cohabitation. more
October 21, 2025 | News
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) investigated whether the recruitment material used for online surveys during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced respondents' answers. To this end, they analyzed the responses of people recruited via Facebook ads with or without a reference to the virus. The results showed no consistent correlation between advertising images and the wearing of medical masks or handwashing frequency. Instead, the age of the respondents and the month in which the survey was conducted were found to be more closely related to these behaviors. more
October 07, 2025 | News | New Position
Aliakbar Akbaritabar took up his new position as Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science at the University of Rostock on 1 October. His work at the University of Rostock is made possible through a collaboration between the University and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). Akbaritabar has been a postdoctoral research scientist at the MPIDR since 2021, where he was most recently deputy head for training in the Department of Digital and Computational Demography and before that, deputy head of the Laboratory of Migration and Mobility. more
October 06, 2025 | News | Congratulations
Henrik Schubert, from the Department of Social Demography, successfully defended his doctoral thesis, titled “The fertility puzzle. Trends and patterns of male and female fertility.”, at the University of Oxford. For one of his dissertation chapters, “Too many men”, he received the Julia Mead Knox Memorial Prize from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the renowned University of Oxford. more
September 25, 2025 | Defo News
This issue of Demografische Forschung aus Erster Hand explains why it is important to assess poverty using different parameters to those used previously, and which parameters are most suitable. The second article deals with education and the pension system. The former can contribute to stabilising the latter. The final article discusses partnerships between people with and without a migration background. Such partnerships often lead to conflicts with parents. more
September 16, 2025 | News | SPOTLIGHT
Childlessness is becoming an increasingly common issue as people are delaying to start a family and the couples do not have a child. Notably, more men than women remain childless. A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) shows that regional partner markets—particularly the ratio of men to women in the relevant age and educational groups — significantly influence childlessness among men in Finland. more
September 11, 2025 | News | Max Planck Partner Group
In September, Ben Malinga John, a former MPIDR researcher, started leading a Max Planck Partner Group (UNIMAX) in Zomba, Malawi, hosted by the University of Malawi. His research will focus on studying family formation processes among highly educated individuals. more