This Panel brings together researchers from demography, sociology, public health, and related fields to advance the comparative study of kinship. We aim to organize workshops, conferences, and other events to highlight and foster research on kinship structures and dynamics. Topics of interest include the availability of kin, lack of kin, intergenerational processes and resource exchanges, and kin loss, among others.
The panel addresses the need to understand how large-scale sociodemographic shifts reshape family systems beyond the household and, in turn, reproduce or mitigate social and economic inequality. Whereas family research has long centered on partnerships and co-residential nuclear kin, we emphasize the often-overlooked importance of extended and non-co-resident relatives—grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins—for individuals, families, and societies. Kinship plays a central role for understanding and responding to contemporary sociodemographic changes worldwide.
Workshop: “An introduction to the analysis of population-level kinship structures”
Mumbai, India, 24-27 November 2025
- Call for papers - Deadline for applications: 30 August 2025 - This workshop is restricted to PhD scholars and postdoctoral researchers at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) interested in studying family structures beyond co-resident kin.
Type of activities planned by the Panel:
- Workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions: We will conduct regular workshops to allow researchers to discuss methodological advancements and empirical findings related to the study of kinship structures and their consequences for social inequality in demography.
- Policy Briefs and Reports: Panel findings will be translated into policy briefs to support government and nonprofit initiatives aimed at strengthening evidence-based policies.
- Publications and Dissemination: Research outputs will be shared through academic publications and reports to ensure replicability and accessibility.
- Special Issue: The panel aims to organize a special issue in a leading demographic journal on the topics of kinship and inequality. Ideally, this would be accompanied by a workshop for potential authors to present their work.
- Training: In addition to substantive workshops and sessions, we will organise training workshops and sessions at leading demographic conferences to increase the network of researchers engaging in research on kinship and contribute to open science.