Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar with Julia Behrman
Julia Behrman, PhD, associate professor of sociology, Northwestern University, presents “The deinstitutionalization of parenthood in the United States.”
The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.
With the aim of disseminating scholarly research, The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies hosts a diverse array of speakers. They do not represent or speak for the Center, the School or the University, and hosting them does not imply endorsement of their views, organizations, or employers.
Speaker Information
Organizers
Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar with Bocar Ba
Bocar Ba, PhD, Kathleen Kaylor and G. Richard Wagoner Jr. Assistant Professor of Economics, Duke University, presents “Understanding demand for police alternatives.”
The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.
With the aim of disseminating scholarly research, The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies hosts a diverse array of speakers. They do not represent or speak for the Center, the School or the University, and hosting them does not imply endorsement of their views, organizations, or employers.
Speaker Information
Organizers
Managing Your Electronic Records: Shared Drives and Email
Does it take ages to find a file in your shared drive? Are you running out of room in your email? Save yourself and your office time and money by learning to manage your electronic records. In this workshop, we’ll help you manage your email and electronic records efficiently and effectively by giving you guidelines for:
- Naming and organizing your files for fast and easy access
- Developing a file plan for your office shared drive
- Determining which emails you should keep, and how to store them
- Learning how to keep your digital records in compliance with Harvard’s records management policies
Workshops are about 45 minutes long. Attendance is free and open to all members of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health communities. Familiarity with the General Records Schedule (grs.harvard.edu) is helpful but not required.
Organizers
Managing Your Paper Records: Off-Site Records Storage
Run out of room for files in your office that you need to keep? The Harvard Depository records center is the perfect place for your office, department, or lab to store records that you need to keep but don’t use every day. In this online workshop, we’ll review step-by-step instructions for:
- How to set up an account
- How to pack and label boxes correctly
- How to complete transfer paperwork
- How to recall records back to your office
Workshops are about 30 minutes long. Familiarity with the General Records Schedule (GRS) is helpful but not required. Attendance is free and open to all members of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health communities.
Organizers
Introduction to the General Records Schedule
Do you know how long you need to keep your office records, and what you should do when you no longer need them? In this workshop, we’ll help de-mystify records retention by showing you how to use and understand the Harvard University General Records Schedule (GRS). We’ll give you all the information you need to:
- Identify your records using the GRS
- Determine how long to keep your records
- Decide if records should be destroyed or archived
- Know who to contact if the GRS doesn’t describe your records
Workshops are about 30 minutes long. Attendance is free and open to all members of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health communities.
Organizers
What do we owe participants? Ethics and practice of environmental health data report-back
This second workshop of a two-part series offered by the NIEHS Center Science Communications Hub will expand on concepts from the first workshop and discuss the ethics and best practices of communicating results to study participants and affected communities. The first workshop provides an introduction to environmental health literacy and developing communications approaches to reach a wide variety of audiences.
Please register separately for both workshops: Workshop 1 (30 September) and Workshop 2 (28 October).
Learning Objectives
Coming soon!
About the Speaker
Katie Tomsho is an Instructor in the Department of Environmental Health and Director of the Environmental Justice and Health Program. Her prior experiences as a community organizer focused on environmental science led to her interest in effective communication of environmental health data. Building on this work, she has focused on improving rigorous, transparent methods for communicating environmental health data to diverse audiences. Her research interests include environmental exposure data report-back, environmental health literacy, and the development of communication strategies that support community decision-making.
Speaker Information
Organizers
Making our science easier to understand: Environmental health literacy basics for researchers
This first workshop of a two-part series offered by the NIEHS Center Science Communications Hub will provide an introduction to environmental health literacy and developing communications approaches to reach a wide variety of audiences. The second workshop will expand on these concepts and discuss the ethics and best practices of communicating results to study participants and affected communities.
Please register separately for both workshops: Workshop 1 (30 September) and Workshop 2 (28 October).
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop, you will be able to:
- Describe the basic concepts of literacy, numeracy, and environmental health literacy
- Identify factors of communications that pose challenges for audiences with low literacy skills
- Apply basic tools to enhance accessibility of written materials
About the Speaker
Katie Tomsho is an Instructor in the Department of Environmental Health and Director of the Environmental Justice and Health Program. Her prior experiences as a community organizer focused on environmental science led to her interest in effective communication of environmental health data. Building on this work, she has focused on improving rigorous, transparent methods for communicating environmental health data to diverse audiences. Her research interests include environmental exposure data report-back, environmental health literacy, and the development of communication strategies that support community decision-making.
Speaker Information
Organizers
What makes care possible? Protection, trust, and solidarity in global health
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring Christos Christou, former international president of MSF and visiting scholar at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Please note that an HUID is required to attend this in-person event.
Seminar description
Drawing on experiences from humanitarian crises, conflict settings, and epidemic response, this talk explores three conditions that make care possible: the protection of patients and health workers, trust in science and the institutions that deliver care, and solidarity in responding to needs that transcend borders. Through selected cases, Christos Christou will reflect on what happens when these conditions erode and why defending them is essential to defending humanity itself.
Speaker bio
Christos Christou, MSc, PhD, is a surgeon and humanitarian leader who served as international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from 2019 to 2025. He joined MSF early in his medical career and has worked in humanitarian settings affected by conflict, displacement, epidemics, and limited access to health care. As international president, he led MSF through the COVID-19 pandemic and major humanitarian crises, while advocating for the protection of civilians and health workers, equitable access to health care, and respect for international humanitarian law.
Christos trained in general and trauma surgery in Greece and the United Kingdom and has worked as a consultant in emergency and colorectal surgery in the NHS. He is currently a visiting scientist at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His academic and teaching interests include humanitarian leadership, trust within communities, health in conflicts, and the protection of medical care. He also contributes to advisory initiatives in global and humanitarian health.
Christos holds a PhD in surgery, an MSc in international health and health crisis management, and the European Board of Surgery Qualification in Coloproctology. In 2025, he was named to the TIME100 list of the world’s most influential leaders shaping the future of philanthropy.
Speaker Information
Christos Christou
Organizers
Trust & Well-being with Dr. David Bersoff
On Wednesday, November 4th from 1-1:50 PM in FXB G12 and online, please join us for the second installment in our Trust and Well-being Seminar Series, featuring Dr. David Bersoff.
All are welcome. Lunch provided.
Series Theme
This seminar series will explore the role of trust in promoting psychological, physical, and social well-being. At a time of declining trust in institutions, political polarization, fear-based public discourse, and rapidly changing technologies that shape how people encounter information and one another, the series will consider trust not only as an individual experience but also as a central feature of collective well-being. Through conversations with leading scholars and practitioners, we will examine how trust is defined and measured across diverse social and cultural contexts; how it functions across relationships, communities, institutions, and generations; and how it is built, maintained, broken, and repaired.
The series will also explore how social, political, commercial, and cultural factors shape trust, with particular attention to health equity and the histories of exclusion, discrimination, disinvestment, and institutional harm that influence whether communities feel able to trust systems. Together, we will consider how trust and trustworthiness can promote safety, belonging, resilience, civic participation, health-promoting behaviors, and flourishing while helping to build more connected, equitable, and resilient communities and systems.
Speaker Biography
Dr. David Bersoff is the Head of Research for the Edelman Trust Institute, Edelman’s think tank dedicated to advancing the study of trust in society. As the Institute’s Chief Trust Scientist, Dr. Bersoff is responsible for ensuring the quality, integrity, and scientific value of all of Edelman’s trust-oriented research, which includes the annual Trust Barometer, the biggest and longest running global study of institutional trust, as well as yearly topical studies examining issues such as climate change, trust in the healthcare system, trust in the workplace, trust in brands, and racial justice. He also oversees all of the Trust Institute’s external research projects done in partnership with other academic, social policy, and philanthropic institutions.
Prior to joining Edelman in 2016, Dr. Bersoff spent 17 years as a consumer insights and marketing strategy consultant at The Futures Company (nee Yankelovich). In his last 5 years with the organization, he served as its Chief Insights Officer and was a member of its global board of directors. In that role, he ran the Global Insights Group and drove the research, data analysis, IP creation and product development strategy for all of their syndicated consumer insights offers. In addition to his background in IP development and insights product management, Dr. Bersoff has also served as a trusted advisor and marketing/brand strategy consultant to major clients in industries as diverse as financial services, automotive, media, professional organizations, energy, and the military.
Before entering the consulting world, Dr. Bersoff spent 12 years engaged in social science research at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an assistant professor of social psychology and research methodology and served on its IRB.
Speaker Information
Organizers
Physical Activity and Major Chronic Diseases: Insights from Repeated Measures
Join us on Wednesday, October 7th for the Department of Epidemiology seminar series featuring Dr. Edward Giovannucci.
Abstract: Physical activity is established as a beneficial factor for several major chronic diseases and mortality. Much of the evidence is based on epidemiological studies that have a single baseline measure. The Harvard cohorts have repeated measures, up to every two years, over four decades of follow-up. This unique resource has enabled a deep look at various topics, including the potential for reverse causation, refinement of dose-response relationships, the influence of maintaining an active lifestyle over decades, and the relative influence of moderate versus vigorous activity. Recent insights into these topics will be summarized.
Bio: Dr. Ed Giovannucci is a Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, as well as an American Cancer Society Clinical Researcher Professor. Dr. Giovannucci graduated from Harvard University in 1980, received an MD from University of Pittsburgh in 1984, and received training in anatomic pathology before attaining a doctorate in epidemiology at HSPH in 1992. Over the past four decades, he has conducted studies of diet, physical activity, body weight and metabolic health in relation to cancer and other chronic diseases. The studies were conducted largely in the Harvard cohort studies. He served on 2025 United States Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and continues long-term service on the Expert Panel for the World Cancer Research Fund, the primary global body evaluating evidence for diet and cancer.