About

Hello!

My name is Aja Sutton (she/her; my first name is pronounced /ˈeɪʒə/). I hold a PhD in Geography from the University of Washington (UW). I am a computational social scientist, geographer, and demographer. I am broadly interested in population health; especially how lived environments, information, group- and individual-level behaviour (incl. policy), and population characteristics interact, drive, produce, or reinforce health differences and inequalities. My research incorporates computational and statistical modelling, survey science, and theory and quantitative methods from across the social sciences (incl. social and behavioural ecology, sociology, geography, epidemiology, and demography). I am also interested in methodological development, especially indirect population estimation using survey science and Bayesian (spatial) statistics.

Previously, I have held positions as a Research Affiliate and Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at Stanford University, in the Human Evolutionary Ecology and Health Lab working with Professor James Holland Jones. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Population Research Center at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, working with PRC Director Ethan Sharygin.

During my doctoral training, I was a TADA-BSSR NIH T32 Fellow in Data Science and Demography at UW’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) (2020-2022). My fellowship faculty mentors were Dr. Zack W. Almquist (Associate Professor of Sociology), Dr. Jon Wakefield (Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics), and Dr. Sara Curran (Professor of Sociology, Director of CSDE, and former Editor-in-Chief of Demography). I also received a Certificate in Demographic Methods from CSDE. I remain an active member of Dr. Jones’ HEEH lab (Stanford University), Dr. Almquist’s Homelessness Research Working Group (UW), and Dr. Wakefield’s Space Time Analysis Bayes (STAB) Lab (UW). My other training is broad: I am also trained in history, and human bioarchaeology. In the past I have provided technical osteological expertise to a major cultural resource group on the West Coast of the United States. My osteology work has focused on historic North American settler archaeological contexts, but my academic training focused on early medieval British contexts. My previous training in history and bioarchaeology has provided me with a unique perspective on human social systems, behaviour and health over time.

Some of my specific research interests include: the social and behavioural ecologies of health and disease, social and health inequality, decision-making and social identity, social media use and misinformation, agent-based models and generative social science methods, the social epidemiology of infectious disease, Bayesian spatial and temporal statistics, social and spatial processes of homelessness, the life course, and game theory.

I am a Managing Editor of the Population Dynamics Lab (PDL), a new and soon to be released publication venue and virtual lab experience for short quantitative, computational and methodological insights, as well as for developing and sharing tools for the field of demography. PDL is Edited by Dr. Curran. As of Autumn 2024, I am a health data and informatics editor, and contributing writer for Those Nerdy Girls (formerly, Dear Pandemic), an online resource and newsletter for practical and factual health information where anyone can submit any health-related question and get answers from friendly, knowledgable health experts.