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 |
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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” |
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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" |
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August 7, 2020 |
Population stratification and principal components analysis |
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July 10, 2020 |
Gene-by-environment interplay (GxE). |
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June 12, 2020 |
Polygenic scores, what they are, how to construct them, etc |
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May 8, 2020 |
Andries Marees will be leading the discussion of Chapters 1 and 3 of Mills et al. 2020 |
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April 3, 2020 |
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 |
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March 13, 2020 |
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). |
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February 14, 2020 |
Presentation by Abdel Abdellaoui et al. 2019 on "Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain" |
Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain |