Welcome to the Social-Science Genetics Seminars (SSGS) at USC's Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) and the department of Economics at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. The SSGS provides an informal setting to discuss relevant papers in social-science genetics (typically presented by an author or sometimes reviewed by a club member). We are entirely based online, using Zoom as our platform, and our members are located across the U.S. and Europe. Our meetings are typically once a month on Thursday at 9 am Pacific Time in the first or second week of the month. The series is jointly organized by Brian Finch, Titus Galama, Patrick Turley and Pam Tyler (all at CESR) and hosted by the CESR/VU Amsterdam Center for the Study of Health Inequality (CSHI) and the CESR Behavioral and Health Genomics Center (BHG). If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please contact Titus Galama. For a list of upcoming, and past presentations, see the Table below.

Date 

Time-9:00 AM (PT)

Speaker

Title of Talk

Suggested Literature

January 11, 2024 Rafael Ahlskog “Using fine-grained population-based geolocation data to disentangle causal and non-causal gene-environment correlation across the lifespan”  
December 7, 2023 Hans Fredrik Sunde “Genetic similarity between relatives provides evidence on the presence and history of assortative mating” “Genetic similarity between relatives provides evidence on the presence and history of assortative mating”
November 9, 2023 Sam Trejo "The Phenotype Differences Model Reveals Genetic Effects on Mortality Using Incomplete Sibling Data" "The Phenotype Differences Model Reveals Genetic Effects on Mortality Using Incomplete Sibling Data"
October 26, 2023 Nathaniel Comfort "Taking ancestry seriously: Or, Can Francis Galton rescue social genomics from charges of eugenics?”

Panofsky, Aaron, and Catherine Bliss. “Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification in Genomic Science.” American Sociological Review 82, no. 1 (February 1, 2017): 59–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122416685812.

Comfort, Nathaniel. “Review of Gregory Radick, Disputed Inheritance: The Battle Over Mendel and the Future of Biology.” The FASEB Journal 37, no. 4 (2023): e22830. https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.202300212.

October 12, 2023 Leandro Carvalho “A Chip Off the Old Block? Genetics and The Intergenerational Transmission of Socioeconomic Status”  
June 1, 2023 Michel Nivard “Neither nature nor nurture: Using extended pedigree data to elucidate the origins of indirect genetic effects on offspring educational outcomes.”   
May 4, 2023 Randi Vogt “Scatter versus decile bar plots: What do different ways of visualizing the same polygenic index-phenotype relationship convey to lay audiences?” (Harden & Belsky, https://bold.expert/predicting-education-from-dna/, 2018; Harden, Nat Rev Gen, 2022)
April 6, 2023 Melinda Mills "Applications of multidimensional and longitudinal phenotype measurement in labour market sociogenomics"  
March 9, 2023 Jonathan Beauchamp "Kin-Based Institutions and Economic Development" Link to paper: "Kin-Based Institutions and Economic Development"
February 9, 2023 Xingyan "David" Wang "Genetic diversity fuels gene discovery for tobacco and alcohol use" Link to paper: Genetic diversity fuels gene discovery for tobacco and alcohol use
November 4, 2022 Neil M. Davies "Within-sibship genome-wide association analyses decrease bias in estimates of direct genetic effects" Link to paper: Within-sibship genome-wide association analyses decrease bias in estimates of direct genetic effects
October 6, 2022 Chandra Reynolds “Access to parks and trails and health at the cusp of midlife: individual factors and environmental selection”  
September 15, 2022 David Hugh-Jones “Trading social status for genetics in marriage markets: evidence from UK Biobank” Link to paper: “Trading social status for genetics in marriage markets: evidence from UK Biobank”
June 2, 2022 Sam Trejo "What Makes Us Unequal? Understanding Disagreement Regarding Genes and Social Inequality"  
May 12, 2022 Malin Ericsson “Genetic propensities and attained education: Influences on age-related health and mortality”  
April 21, 2022 Daniel J. Benjamin “Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals” Link to article “Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals”
April 14, 2022 Paul Hufe “Genetic Endowments, Educational Outcomes and the Mediating Influence of School Investments”  
March 4, 2022 Perline Demange

“Estimating effects of parents’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills on offspring education using polygenic scores”

 
February 11, 2022 Sjoerd Van Alten “The effects of demographic-based selection bias on GWAS results in the UK Biobank”  
January 14, 2022 Gabriella Conti “Genes, Parental Education, and Inequalities in Human Capital: Evidence two British Cohorts"  
November 12, 2021 Leandro Carvalho “Genotypes, Education, and Income”  
October 8, 2021 Silvia Barcellos Presentation on “The Effect of Education on the Relationship between Genetics, Early-Life Disadvantages, and Later-Life SES”  
September 17, 2021 Marco Francesconi Presentation on "Gene-Environment Effects on Female Fertility"  
July 16, 2021 Victor Ronda Presentation on “The Nurture of Nature and the Nature of Nurture: How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills” The Nurture of Nature and the Nature of Nurture: How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills
June 11, 2021 Fleur Meddens  Presentation on "Genetic contributions to inequality of opportunity"  
May 14, 2021 Hans van Kippersluis Presentation on “Dynamic Complementarity in Skill Production: Evidence From Genetic Endowments and Birth Order”?  
   May 7, 2021 Rosa Cheesman Presentation on “Gene-environment interactions and childhood educational achievement: do within-family polygenic score effects vary across schools and neighbourhoods?”  
April 16, 2021 Pietro Biroli Presentation on "Sources of inequality at birth: the interplay between genes and parental socioeconomic status"  
March 12, 2021 Patrick Turley Discussion on “The imprint of assortative mating in the human genome reflects human behavior and social preferences”  
February 12, 2021 Alexander Young Presentation on “Disentangling genes and environment using genomic family data”  
January 8, 2021 Sjoerd Van Alten Presentation on the topic of parent-child dyads and imputation  
December 4, 2020 Neil Davies Presentation on Mendellian randomization  
November 13, 2020 Jessica Faul

Presentation on "Collecting, extracting, and storing genetic material"

 

August 7, 2020

Jennifer Smith

Population stratification and principal components analysis

 

July 10, 2020

Jason Boardman

Gene-by-environment interplay (GxE). 

 

June 12, 2020

Aysu Okbay

Polygenic scores, what they are, how to construct them, etc

An Introduction to Statistical Genetic Data Analysis

May 8, 2020

Andries Marees

Andries Marees will be leading the discussion of Chapters 1 and 3 of Mills et al. 2020

An Introduction to Statistical Genetic Data Analysis

April 3, 2020

Sam Trejo

Presentation of Sam Trejo paper, Genetic Nature or Genetic Nurture? Quantifying Bias in Analyses Using Polygenic Scores

Genetic Nature or Genetic Nurture? Quantifying Bias in Analyses Using Polygenic Scores

March 13, 2020

Sjoerd van Alten

Discussion of chapter 4 of “An introduction to Statistical Genetic Data Analysis” by Mills, Barban and Tropf, to understand the basics of Genome-wide Association Studies (GWAS).

An Introduction to Statistical Genetic Data Analysis

February 14, 2020

Abdel Abdellaoui

Presentation by Abdel Abdellaoui  et al. 2019 on "Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain"

Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain