I began my graduate studies at the University of Oxford, where I earned an MPhil in Sociology and Demography at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Green Templeton College, graduating with Distinction in both the first and second years. During my MPhil, I gained a deep understanding of formal demography under the guidance of Professor Ridhi Kashyap, Dr. José Manuel Aburto, and Dr. Charles Rahal. I also applied machine learning to population prediction under instruction of Dr. Charles Rahal, and developed expertise in advanced quantitative methods and social epidemiology under the supervision of Professor Jennifer Beam Dowd. Additionally, I completed a Replication Project under the supervision of Dr. Dirk Witteveen, which fostered my interest in open science. At Green Templeton College, I also received valuable advice from my college advisor, Professor Mary Daly FBA.
My MPhil thesis, titled Exploring the Association and Interdependence Between Employment and Fertility in 27 Countries: A Multi-Domain Sequence Analysis Approach, was supervised by Dr. Charles Rahal.
In my spare time during my MPhil studies, I served as a Member of the University of Oxford Sociology Department’s Graduate Joint Consultative Committee and as a Member of the Bodleian Social Science Library Committee.
After completing my MPhil degree, I remained in Oxford to pursue the DPhil degree at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Nuffield College, one of Oxford’s most esteemed colleges, as a Clarendon Scholar in the university’s premier scholarship programme. My DPhil research is jointly supervised by Professor Jennifer Beam Dowd and Professor Ridhi Kashyap. I have also benefited from the invaluable guidance of my college advisor, Professor Melinda Mills, MBE, FBA, FAcSS. Additionally, I am an affiliated doctoral student at the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health, and Data Science, as well as the Labor Demography Laboratory, under the instruction of Dr. Angelo Lorenti. My DPhil research is generously supported by the Clarendon Fund, Nuffield College, and the Max Planck Society.
My DPhil thesis investigates the expansion of education, trends in stagnating or declining life expectancy, disparities in chronic pain in the U.S., and the historical and future risks of famine worldwide. My academic interests broadly encompass social demography, social epidemiology, analytical sociology, sequence analysis, propensity score analysis, applied machine learning, and extreme value theory. I am also working as a fixed-term research assistant on the MORTAL European Research Council Consolidator Project at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the Demographic Science Unit at Oxford Population Health.
In my spare time, I still served as a Member of the Bodleian Social Science Library Committee. I am also a student fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a student member of The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Haohao Lei 