New Leverhulme Centre on Demographic Science
The Leverhulme Trust has today announced that it will be awarding £10 million to a new Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science led by Professorial Fellow Melinda Mills, and based at Nuffield College and the Department of Sociology.
The Centre will take an unconventional approach, uniting researchers not only from demography but also from sociology, criminology, economics, statistics, molecular genetics, biology, history, marketing and business, to bring ‘science’ into demography.
On receiving the announcement, Melinda said, “We are delighted to receive this award. We have never had a Leverhulme Centre at Oxford, nor has there ever been a Leverhulme Centre in the social sciences, so this is a big feather in our cap.
“Demographic research aids society, government and industry to prepare for demands related to population growth and shrinkage, climate change, migration, longevity and ageing, fertility and household change. Our aim is to build an internationally-recognised centre of research excellence that will disrupt, realign and raise the value of demography.”
The Leverhulme Trust awarded £30 million in total to three research centres to encourage original research that will establish or reshape a significant field of study and transform our understanding of an important topic in contemporary societies.
Professor Gordon Marshall, the Director of the Trust, commented, “Leverhulme Trust Research Centres are a major investment in discovery-led inquiry at a time when funding for fundamental scholarship is under great pressure. They are our vote-of-confidence in the quality of the UK’s outstanding researchers.
“Each Centre will embrace multi-disciplinary and international collaborations designed to bring the highest calibre of expertise to bear on these exciting areas of inquiry. The Trust Board is delighted to add these new awards to its portfolio of long-term research investments.”
Nuffield College will be contributing £750k in matched funding across the 10-year lifetime of the new Centre. The College has also committed to provide space for the Centre in the refurbished premises at 42 Park End Street, into which the Department of Sociology will move as a whole in April 2019.
The news was announced by the Leverhulme Trust on Friday 11 January 2019, and reported by the University of Oxford and the Department of Sociology on the same day.