International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Post-Doc, World Population Program

About

Stuart Basten joined the World Population Program at IIASA in October 2009. He is a social demographer working on fertility in the industrial world.

Within the EU funded meta-project 'Forecasting Societies’ Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change', Stuart is engaged on two interlinked projects:

1. The future of human reproduction

This project is an attempt to design a multi-disciplinary theoretical framework to investigate and, through agent-based modeling, to predict possible future trends in human reproduction. The study requires an interaction between demography and biomedical science, anthropology, economics, sociology, political science and religious, cultural and media studies to design dynamic new solutions to one of the most fundamental questions of the near future.

2. Ultra-low fertility in East Asia

Focusing primarily on Shanghai, this project forms an investigation of what drives a society to the lowest levels of fertility. In particular, the research will examine how small family sizes and childlessness become normalized and socialized, rendering policy attempts to increase fertility rates fraught with difficulties.

Prior to joining IIASA, Stuart was a Postdoctoral Research Officer at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work / St. John’s College, University of Oxford. Stuart gained his PhD in historical demography at the University of Cambridge in 2008.

Stuart has lectured in philosophy and history at the University of Cambridge, Oxford Brookes University, the University of Birmingham and Prešovská Univerzita, Slovakia. At the University of Oxford, Stuart taught demography and sociology within the Human Science, Management and Economics and PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) courses.

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