PAA Showcase: Nicholas Campisi

Nicholas Campisi is a St. Andrews-Max Planck funded PhD student researching spatial variation in urban-rural fertility patterns across Europe. He is supervised by Hill Kulu and Julia Mikolai at the University of St Andrews, Mikko Myrskylä, and Sebastian Klüsener at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

Nicholas will be travelling to Texas for the PAA Annual Meeting as attendee and poster presenter. The Annual Meeting is for PAA members, a diverse and interdisciplinary group of researchers from the fields of demography, sociology, economy, political science, geography, history, epidemiology, statistics health and social sciences. We asked Nicholas to summarise his research and tell us what he will gain from this exciting opportunity:

‘I will be presenting on the first project of my PhD in a poster titled “Cross-National and Sub-National Fertility across Europe”. This project focuses on spatial trends in local fertility in 21 European countries. The work focuses on small geographical areas to explore persistent low fertility in (urban) areas that have high population density and higher fertility in neighbouring (rural) areas.

My analysis demonstrates country-specific variations in what ‘high’ or ‘low’ fertility may be, which creates similar patterns of fertility and similar levels of fertility in adjacent regions in different countries. On a European level, spatial modelling demonstrates strong relationships between local fertility and economic, sociocultural, and geographic factors. Relationships between fertility and related factors have undergone recent changes – in some cases from historically strong relationships to now weak. My research contributes to understanding of these relationships in light of these changes and advocates sociocultural perspectives on fertility trends.

Urban-rural fertility patterns are historically robust across almost every context. Understanding how fertility patterns are shaped and what large-scale contexts contribute to small-scale patterns will help researchers understand European trends of below-replacement fertility . This will also allow administrators to understand where demographic trends are leading to natural population growth and what factors contribute to this growth. My research specifically ties together projects focusing on single-country contexts that omit countries with drastically different fertility levels, and projects that examine many countries but do not explore local contexts or fertility levels.

I see PAA as a great way to interact with population researchers not just from the US, but all over the world. I hope to gain international perspective on my European research by presenting at the conference. Lastly, as an American student in the UK, PAA is a great opportunity for me to strengthen researcher connection between St Andrews/CPC and researchers at US institutions.’

Nicholas’ poster will be on display in Poster Session 1 ‘Fertility, Family Planning, Sexual Behaviour, & Reproductive Health 1’ from 08:00-09:30, Griffin Hall Level 2.

Nicholas is just one of the many CPC researchers who are presenting at PAA this year. Find out more about CPC contributions here.

PAA Annual Meeting takes place in Austin, Texas 10-13 April, keep up to date by following #PAA2019.

Posted 29/03/2019 14:11