Professor Ridhi Kashyap wins prestigious Leverhulme Prize

Professor Ridhi Kashyap wins prestigious Leverhulme Prize 
 

Professor Ridhi Kashyap has won a Philip Leverhulme Prize, awarded to researchers at an early stage of their careers whose work has had international impact and whose future research career is exceptionally promising.

This prestigious award carries a value of £100,000, which will be used to advance Ridhi's research. This is the first time an Oxford Sociology researcher has been awarded the prize. 

After commencing her position in the Department of Sociology in 2017 as Associate Professor, Ridhi became Professor of Demography & Computational Social Science in 2022. She is also a Fellow of Nuffield College.

Ridhi’s research spans different topics in demography and population dynamics. A central interest of her work has been to leverage computational approaches for demographic research, and forge links between demography and a growing interdisciplinary community of computational social science.

Her research asks how the spread of digital technologies has transformed populations and demographic behaviours, and shifted how we measure and understand population dynamics. In addressing these questions, she has helped to advance the sub-field of Digital and Computational Demography. 

A significant focus of Ridhi's research has been on gender inequality. She has worked on the demographic implications of son preference as one of the most striking ways in which gender inequality interacts with demographic behaviours. 

Within the Digital Gender Gaps project, Ridhi uses social media data, together with survey results, to nowcast global digital gender inequalities in internet and mobile access, a global Sustainable Development Goal indicator for which there is a significant data gap. You can read more about the impact of this work here.

Ridhi will use the Leverhulme Prize to continue to develop her work in digital and computational demography. She and her team are currently expanding methods to use social media data for mapping subnational population and development processes. They are also examining the social and demographic impacts of digitalisation at different stages of digital diffusion, and in a comparative global perspective. 

Upon receiving the Prize, Ridhi said:

I am grateful to the Head of Department for supporting my nomination for the Leverhulme Prize.

Oxford is an exciting place to conduct research at the intersection of demography and computational social science. I look forward to continuing my research in both substantive and methodological directions and contributing to the advancement of digital and computational demography. 

The Department wishes Ridhi a huge congratulations on this amazing achievement!