Professor Ridhi Kashyap awarded prestigious Leverhulme prize

Congratulations to Connecting Generations member, Professor Ridhi Kashyap, who has won a Philip Leverhulme Prize for her outstanding research achievements in demography.

Awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, the prize recognises researchers at an early stage of their careers whose work has had international impact and whose future research career is exceptionally promising. The prestigious prize carries a value of £100,000 which Professor Kashyap will use to advance her demographic research further.

Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said: "In its twenty-second year, this scheme continues to attract applications from exceptionally high calibre researchers. The Leverhulme Trust is thrilled to award prizes to academics undertaking work on an impressive range of topics, from plant evolution to the history of capitalism, family law to theoretical statistics, and the philosophy of science to human trafficking. We are very proud to support these researchers through the next stage of their careers. Selecting the winners gets tougher each year, and we are incredibly grateful to the reviewers and panel members who help us in our decision-making."

Professor Kashyap has received the award for her work on demography, social statistics, computational social science, digital and computational demography, and gender inequalities.

Ridhi Kashyap, Professor of Demography and Computational Social Science at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science said, ‘I am absolutely thrilled to receive this award among a cohort of immensely talented researchers. I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust and colleagues at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science for their unwavering support and expertise. Together, we are propelling the emerging field of digital and computational demography to new heights.’

Professor Kashyap’s demographic research encompasses diverse areas such as mortality, population health, gender inequality, family dynamics, and migration. Her research has played a pivotal role in advancing the field of digital and computational demography. She has developed approaches that use real-time social media data for monitoring population and development outcomes. As part of Connecting Generations, she works on the Connecting generations through genetics and genealogy project, shedding light on how life course timings and trajectories persist and change over generations and how these may be driven by social environmental and biologically inherited family factors.

Professor Kashyap also leads the Digital Gender Gaps project, which uses social media data and survey results to monitor global digital inequality in real-time, with an updated web dashboard available here. In addition, she has written on the gender and demographic impacts of the spread of digital technologies across the world.

Professor Melinda Mills, Connecting Generations Co-Director and Director of the Demographic Science Unit and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science adds: "This prize recognises Ridhi’s exceptional contributions to demographic research that are globally impactful and shaping the future of demography and computational social sciences. Congratulations Ridhi!"

Read the full story on the LCDS website: Professor Kashyap awarded prestigious Leverhulme prize

Posted 23/10/2023 08:50