Emilio Zagheni

Emilio Zagheni is an Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Washington and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany since 2018. He holds a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of California, Berkeley (2010). His research focuses on leveraging big data and digital trace data (e.g., social media, search engines) to study migration, fertility, aging, and intergenerational transfers. He pioneered methods using non-representative internet data for demographic analysis.

Key research areas include:

• Migration corridors and clusters via Google+ data
• Social media analytics for fertility behavior and search patterns
• Bayesian modeling of subnational mortality
• Input-output frameworks for unpaid resource transfers

He received the Trailblazer Award for Demographic Analysis (2016) from the European Association for Population Studies. His work has advanced demographic methods through workshops on social media and cellphone data, including sessions at PAA, ICWSM, and IUSSP conferences. He co-chairs the IUSSP Panel on Big Data and Population Processes. His research integrates demographic theory with computational methods, emphasizing innovative data sources for policy-relevant insights.