Dr Sarah Walters
MSc PhD
Associate Professor
of Demography
Project webpage: www.lshtm.ac.uk/aph
My background is in African history and demography. I have a BA in history (Cambridge), MSc in Demography and Health (LSHTM) and PhD in African historical demography (Cambridge). I conducted my PhD at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, with fieldwork in East Africa.
I have worked at LSHTM since 2008, including a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical History and Humanities (2011-14), and leading the CRUK-funded Cancer Policy Programme (2014-17).
Centres
Teaching
I teach on the MSc Demography and Health. I co-organise the module 'Population, Dynamics and Projections', and contribute to the modules 'Poverty, Population and Environment' and 'Analysing Survey and Population Data'.
Research
I work on demographic trends and estimation, with a particular focus on Africa. I lead the Counting Souls project, which aims to improve the evidence base for long-term demographic trends in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. I am also currently working on a project about the use of machine learning to extract demographic microdata in Africa, and research on ageing in Africa and the UK.
I am interested in how ideas about reproduction, health and the family change over time, and how ideational change can be measured and expressed in demography. My work is interdisciplinary – at the interface between demography, anthropology and history. I enjoy finding creative synergies between disciplines and seeing how this enables critical thinking in public health, as well as exploring the challenges of this way of working.
I worked for several years at the Cancer Survival Group on measuring and explaining inequalities in cancer survival both within the UK, and internationally, and later leading the the CRUK Cancer Policy Programme. I have an ongoing interest in global health equity and social inequalities in health, and the relationship between research and policy.
