Advisory Board

Ernesto F. L. Amaral (Ph.D. in Sociology/Demography, University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Dr. Amaral’s research interests are related to social demography, migration, and public policy analysis. His teaching interests include demography and migration, methods and social statistics, and public policy analysis. Prior to joining Texas A&M University, Dr. Amaral was an associate sociologist at the RAND Corporation and professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School from 2014 to 2017. He served as an assistant/associate professor in the Political Science Department at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, from 2009 to 2014. 

Ann Biddlecom (Ph.D. in Sociology and Population Studies, Brown University) joined the Guttmacher Institute in 2016 as a Director of International Research. Her research interests are in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, sexual behavior, family planning services, adolescent health, fertility and survey measurement. Previously, she served as Chief of the Fertility and Family Planning Section in the Population Division of the United Nations from 2009 to 2016, and she held prior research positions at the Guttmacher Institute, the University of Michigan and the Population Council. Dr. Biddlecom is a member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Population Association of America and the Union of African Population Studies.

Mick Couper (Ph.D. in Sociology, Rhodes University) is an adjunct clinical professor of Information (School of Information), and research professor (Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research) at the University of Michigan. Dr. Couper’s current research interests include survey non-response, design and implementation of survey data collection, effects of technology on the survey process, and computer-assisted interviewing, including both interviewer-adminstered (CATI and CAPI) and self-administered (web, audio-CASI, IVR) surveys. Many of his current projects focus on the design of web surveys.

Rob Crosnoe (Ph.D. in Sociology, Stanford University) is an associate professor of Sociology and faculty research associate at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Dr. Crosnoe completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Carolina Population Center and the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  His main research areas are human development, education, family, and health; specifically, the connections among children’s, adolescents’, and young adults' health, social development, and educational trajectories and how these connections contribute to population-level inequalities (e.g., social class, immigration).

David Lam (Ph.D. in Economics, University of California at Berkeley) is a research professor and the director of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Dr. Lam's research focuses on the interaction of economics and demography in developing countries, including analysis of the economics of population growth, fertility, marriage, and aging. Current research projects include analysis of the links between education and income inequality in Brazil and South Africa, the impact of demographic change on labor markets, and the links between birth rates and education in developing countries. He is collaborating with researchers from the University of Cape Town on projects analyzing youth transitions in education, childbearing, and employment using the Cape Area Panel Study, a longitudinal survey supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Duncan Thomas (Ph.D. in Economics, Princeton University) is a professor of Economics, Global Health and Public Policy for the Department of Economics at Duke University. Dr. Thomas investigates the inter-relationships between health, human capital and socio-economic status with a focus on the roles that individual, family and community factors play in improving levels of health and well-being across the globe. Much of this work highlights resource allocation and decision-making within households and families. His research uses data from large-scale population based longitudinal surveys that he has designed and fielded in collaboration with Elizabeth Frankenberg and other colleagues in the U.S., Indonesia and Mexico. These include the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), the Work and Iron Status Evaluation (WISE), the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) and the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS). He was the founding director of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Development Economics program.