College of Arts and Sciences » Sociology

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Christmas Day

Holidays No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm. Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics. Thursday, December 25, 2025. For more info visit www.washington.edu.

New Year's Day

Holidays No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm. Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics. Thursday, January 1, 2026. For more info visit www.washington.edu.

Alexander Volfovsky - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Seminar abstract coming soon! Alexander Volfovsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistical Science and the Co-Director of the Polarization Lab and the Almost Matching Exactly Lab at Duke. He joined the department after finishing a NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Statistics Department at Harvard University. Prior to that he completed his PhD in statistics at the University of Washington in Seattle and a joint Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Master’s degree in Statistics from the University of Chicago. His research concentrates on developing theory and methodological tools for computational social science applications, with particular interests in high dimensional data, causal inference and network analysis. With collaborators at Duke he has developed novel tools for community detection, for extracting causal signals from high dimensional observational data and for new approaches to implementing and analyzing network experiments. … Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

SocSEM Speaker: Courtney Boen

Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/97653316579. Campus room: SAV 409. Accessibility Contact: To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance at: (206) 543-6450/V, (206) 543-6452/TTY, (206) 685-7264 (FAX), or dso@u.washington.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Event sponsors: The Earl & Edna Stice Memorial Lectureship in Social Science. Target Audience: Sociology Faculty and Graduate Students. Thursday, January 15, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Holidays No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm. Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics. Monday, January 19, 2026. For more info visit www.washington.edu.

Laura Dwyer-Lindgren - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Seminar abstract coming soon! Laura Dwyer-Lindgren is an Assistant Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. At IHME, she leads the US Health Disparities Team which aims to estimate disease burden and disparities in disease burden by location, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status in the United States. She also is a member of the Local Burden of Disease research team, where her focus is mapping the HIV epidemic globally. Dr. Dwyer-Lindgren received an MPH in Health Metrics and Evaluation from the University of Washington and a PhD in Public Health from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

Jevin West - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Seminar abstract coming soon! Jevin West is the co-founder of the new Center for an Informed Public at UW aimed at resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society and strengthening democratic discourse. His research and teaching focus on the impact of data and technology on science and society, with a focus on slowing the spread of misinformation. He is the co-author of the new book, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World, which helps non-experts question numbers, data, and statistics without an advanced degree in data science. , https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

Martin Saveski - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Seminar abstract coming soon! Martin Saveski is an Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Before joining UW, he was a Postdoc at Stanford University, mentored by Johan Ugander. He received my Ph.D. from MIT in 2020 under the supervision of Deb Roy. Prior to coming to MIT, he spent one year in Paris and one year in Barcelona doing a M.Sc. in Data mining and Knowledge Management. He got his B.Sc. from Staffordshire University with First Class honors in Computer Science. Throughout his graduate studies, he spent several summers doing internships in industry, including Yahoo! Labs, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook. https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

CSDE Biodemography Working Group Meeting

Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Raitt Hall (RAI). Campus room: 223. Accessibility Contact: csde-prgm-coord@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Event sponsors: The CSDE Biomarker Working Group is a forum for discussions of practical and theoretical issues associated with collecting and using biomarker data in social and behavioral science research. This working group is open to all students, faculty, and staff and meets on the first Thursday of each month. Thursday, February 5, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.

Paul Wesson - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Seminar abstract coming soon! Paul Wesson is an epidemiologist focused on quantifying the health burdens of (and disparities related to) hard-to-reach and socially marginalized populations, particularly as they relate to infectious diseases. His research expertise includes developing and using data-driven methods for sampling hard-to-reach and “hidden” populations, population size estimation methods, and using advanced epidemiologic and statistical techniques to study the social determinants of health. He is particularly interested in the social determinants of infectious disease risk. He sees his research as existing at the nexus of infectious disease, data science, and social epidemiology; as such, he incorporates theories and principles from social epidemiology to inform and guide his study designs and analyses (e.g. intersectionality, minority stress theory). https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

SocSEM Speaker: Jack Goldstone

Presidents' Day

Holidays No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm. Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics. Monday, February 16, 2026. For more info visit www.washington.edu.

Debrielle Jacques - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Seminar abstract coming soon! Debrielle Jacques is an Assistant Professor of Child Clinical Psychology at the University of Washington. Research-wise, she is broadly interested in a) the developmental effects of parent psychopathology and b) childhood risk, resilience, developmental psychopathology, and general child development in adverse family environments. Specifically, she is interested in studying how and why addiction (especially among mothers) impacts parenting - including parent social cognition, parenting attributions, parenting behavior, and parent-child interactions - and consequently, child development, including the development of psychological problems. In studying children of mothers with substance use disorders, she is also interested in better understanding the underlying function of the strategies children use to navigate these family environments, including a) how children calibrate and adjust these strategies to environmental changes over time (e.g. increasing levels of domestic… Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

Estimating global age- and sex-specific all-cause mortality in 204 countries and territories and 660 subnational locations from 1950–2025 for the Global Burden of Disease Study | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Abstract: Comprehensive, comparable, and timely estimates of age-specific mortality are essential for evaluating, understanding, and addressing trends in population health. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of timely all-cause mortality estimates for being able to respond to changing trends in health outcomes, showing a strong need for analysis tools that can produce all-cause mortality estimates more rapidly with more readily available all-age vital registration data. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) is an ongoing research effort that quantifies human health by estimating a range of epidemiological quantities of interest across time, age, sex, location, cause, and risk. This seminar will cover the methodology used to estimate all-cause mortality for the GBD. Specifically, it will explain the novel statistical model developed as part of the latest release (GBD 2023). This model accounts for complex correlation structures in demographic data across age and… Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.

Kush Varshney - Upcoming Seminar | UW CSSS SEMINAR

Center for Statistics and Social Sciences Abstract: As AI systems increasingly shape our personal, professional, and societal lives, the question is not only what machines can do, but who controls the values and outcomes they produce. This talk examines both individual agency — the capacity to think, judge, and act — and collective agency, where communities define norms, resist imposed standards, and guide AI deployment. Drawing on research in trustworthy AI, decolonial alignment, and human–AI collaboration, I will explore technical and governance approaches that preserve human autonomy, including transparency tools, scoped alignment methods, and collaborative task structures. I will introduce AI platform cooperatives as a counterweight to tech‑company dominance, fostering community ownership, shared governance, and technological self-determination. Ultimately, AI should be a tool that empowers humans, singly and together. Kush R. Varshney is an IBM Fellow based at the T. J. Watson Research Center where he is responsible for innovations in AI… Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. SAV 409. For more info visit csss.uw.edu.