Susan Watkins

Susan Cotts Watkins is Senior Research Scientist and Director of African Demography at the California Center for Population Research. Watkins joined UCLA in 2007 from University of Pennsylvania where she was Professor of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and her research focused on historical and comparative sociology, social change and modernization.

Her current work focuses on large-scale demographic and social change, specifically 1) fertility transitions in historical Europe and the U.S. and in contemporary Africa; 2) the AIDS epidemic in Africa; 3) the role of social networks in these changes . In pursuing these interests, she has organized two longitudinal survey projects, one in Kenya (www.Kenya.pop.upenn.edu) and more recently a larger project in Malawi (www.malawi.pop.upenn.edu).