Hooked by the challenge of complexity of historic demographic data

Most of Alices work concerns the historical demography of Great Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the period around the first demographic transition. Within that she has spent a lot of time investigating social and spatial differences in mortality and the influences on such differences, but she has also examined fertility and marriage and the influence of migration. 

“I never really had a career plan – as a teenager I had no idea what I wanted to do and when I went to University I chose to study 3 subjects I had never studied before: philosophy, politics and economics. As part of this I took an optional course called ‘comparative demographic analysis’ and this inspired me to study for a masters in demography with a vague intent of working in lower income countries (my mastersdissertation was on fertility decline in Zimbabwe).”

The rest – as they say – is history!
After finishing her master, she was not sure whether she wanted to spend 3 or more years on a PhD. So, she worked as a research assistant in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, in a project on 19th century census returns.

“I became hooked by challenge of complexity of historic demographic data, the intellectual questions to be answered, and the collaborative nature of the research. The rest – as they say – is history! “ 

Like many academics, I’m always allowing myself to be distracted by interesting data, new project ideas, and exciting collaborations!

Currently Alice is working on rounding off a project that she has been leading over the last 4 years on Britain’s first demographic transition, bringing together the constituent countries of the Britain but also looking at small scale geographic variation within them, and also considering how the different demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration interacted and were shaped by local experiences.

“I have played a supporting role in the Digitising Scotland project for which I developed a coding and classification system for individual-level historic causes of death and I’m currently deeply involved in an on-going project to devise an international version of this scheme. And, like many academics, I’m always allowing myself to be distracted by interesting data, new project ideas, and exciting collaborations!”