Popfest 2011

In 2011, PopFest was held for the 19th time and for the first time in its history took place outside the UK. The conference was held at the Population Research Centre of the University of Groningen (RUG), the Netherlands, from 27th to 29th June. PopFest is an annual population studies conference organized by postgraduate students to fellow postgraduates. The 37 presenters and the couple of non-presenting participants came from various universities of different European as well as non-European countries. About one third of the attendees were students in the universities of the United Kingdom, while another third were students in the Netherlands, and the rest represented various institutions across the world. Most distant participants came from the universities of Israel, Australia, and the United States.

The presentations were divided into 13 sessions with diverse topics such as health, ageing, mortality, fertility trends, migration and integration, life course, data and methods in population studies, labour market, and spatial aspects of population. Furthermore, a keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Dirk van de Kaa was held on the first day on big questions in demography. An IUSSP qualitative research panel lunch seminar as well was held on the second day, as well as a panel discussion on the topic of healthy ageing which included Prof. Dr. Patrick Deboosere (VuB), Prof. Dr. Klaus Schoemann (BIGSSS), Prof. Dr. Jane Falkingham (University of Southampton), and Dr. Ton Mulder (HANNN).

All in all, PopFest 2011 provided a relaxed environment, in which the participants received feedback, learned more about current population related developments, and improved their academic network.

Popfest 2011 was supported financially by the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), Netherlands Graduate School of Urban and Regional Research (NETHUR), British Society for Population Studies (BSPS), Population Research Centre (PRC), University of Groningen, Centre for Population Change (CPC), The Netherlands Demographic Society (NVD), Healthy Ageing Network Northern Netherlands (HANNN).

Next year's conference PopFest 2012 will be hosted by the Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.

Posted 20/09/2011 15:41