Who We Are
As feminist demographers, we aim to acknowledge and critique our field’s historical entanglement with eugenics, coercion, and population control. We reject the instrumentalization of people’s bodies, especially women's bodies and bodies of marginalized groups, for demographic goals and population projects. We call on our colleagues to learn from the field's history so we do not repeat these mistakes in current and future demographic research.
We also believe that advancing the field as a whole requires a feminist approach to research. We emphasize the importance of critically examining dominant assumptions, embracing qualitative and mixed methods, and developing measures that are meaningful to people's lived experiences. We contend that all demographers—including but not limited to those focused on fertility and reproductive health—must adopt approaches that move beyond treating gender and sexuality as mere variables. We believe this is essential to producing more rigorous research.
Finally, we as feminist demographers emphasize community-engaged and human-centered research practices. We demand research accountability, collaborative efforts, liberation, and justice. We urge our colleagues to be aware of the policy and political implications of our work, power relations in the research and mentoring processes, and the importance of engaging communities and people we are studying.
The Steering Committee
We always welcome people to join us and are open to all scholars and learners. If you are interested in contributing, please contact us at feministdemographycollective@gmail.com
Lindsay M. Cannon (she/her), PhD, MPH, MSW is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Research Affiliate in the Center for Demography and Population Health at Florida State University. Lindsay is a social demographer whose research focuses on gender-based violence, fertility, health, reproductive justice, and the life course.
Dr. Michelle Eilers (she/her) is an assistant professor of sociology at Texas Tech University. She studies intimate relationships, sexual behavior, health, and family formation across the life course. Her work foregrounds sexual desires, attitudes, and cognition in shaping sexual and reproductive behavior, challenging assumptions that minimize women's sexual desire.
Dr. Rachel Hodapp (she/her) is a medical anthropologist and Research Scientist in the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Rachel earned her Master of Social Work and her doctorate in cultural anthropology both from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Her work focuses on feminist ethnography, reproductive well-being, and decolonial praxis in the U.S. and East Africa.
Website
Dr. Dana Johnson (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She researches and writes about abortion, contraception, adolescents, technology, and public policy.
Dr. Emma Romell (she/her) is a social demographer and postdoctoral research associate jointly in the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research examines inequality and wellbeing in the U.S. and abroad, with a focus on fertility, families, and maternal and reproductive health.
Dr. Leslie Root (she/her) is an assistant professor of research in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the associate director of the University of Colorado Population Center. Her research is in the fields of fertility and sexual and reproductive health, and current projects center on the effect of social forces on individuals' fertility over the life course. She also studies population politics, abortion, and the demography of pregnancy and the perinatal period.
Dr. Goleen Samari (she/her) is a public health demographer and associate professor at USC. Using a health justice lens, she studies how discrimination, gender inequities, and migration shape population health, especially among Middle East and North African communities, with work spanning immigrant, refugee, and religious minority health and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Dr. Leigh Senderowicz (she/her) is an assistant professor of gender and health at the University of Wisconsin Madison, with joint appointments in the departments of Gender & Women's Studies and of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Leigh earned her masters of public health from Johns Hopkins and her doctorate in Global Health and Population from Harvard University. Her work explores rights-based approaches to reproductive health measurement.
Dr. Signe Svallfors (they/them) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Stockholm University in Sweden. Svallfors holds a PhD in Sociological Demography (2021) and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and the Karolinska Institute. Their research focuses on the intersection of violence, social inequality, and health dynamics, with an emphasis on reproductive justice and gender-based violence in Latin America.
Iris Zhao (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in Sociology and the Demography training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on fertility-related preferences and behaviors in China, United States, and Sub-Saharan Africa.