Ashton Verdery

I am a sociologist and demographer who uses computational and statistical methods to conduct research on social networks, asking questions about how and why people are socially connected to each other and the consequences of those connections. Within this broad area, I am especially interested in demographic processes, specifically how population dynamics shape family, kinship, and social networks and how those networks in turn affect health and other population processes. I have given special attention to migration and the network ties that migrants retain to origin areas after moving as well as the new ties they form in different destinations. I am also very interested in using social networks as a basis for sampling populations that are otherwise difficult to survey, including migrants, those at high risk of sexually transmitted or blood-borne infections, and opioid users. In this line of research, I am working on new ways to use and improve network based sampling methods, especially respondent-driven sampling.