Hello!
My name is Aja Sutton (my first name is pronounced /ˈeɪʒə/), and I am a computational social scientist, health geographer, and demographer. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Population Research Center (PRC) at Portland State University, Portland, OR, working with PRC Director Ethan Sharygin. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Earth System Science (Social Sciences Division) at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability (Stanford University), where I work in the Human Evolutionary Ecology and Health group under the mentorship of Professor James Holland Jones. I hold a PhD in Geography from the University of Washington (UW); my committee Chair was Dr. Jonathan Mayer (Professor Emeritus of Geography). At UW, I had the pleasure of holding a TADA-BSSR NIH T32 Fellowship 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 Editor-in-Chief of Demography). I hold a Certificate in Demographic Methods from CSDE.
My work is primarily located at the intersection of social ecology, demography, and population health. I am trained in statistical demography, quantitative research methods, GIS and spatial statistical methods, epidemiology, and social and political theory, including the social determinants of health, and health geography. My previous training in history and bioarchaeology has provided me with a unique perspective on human social systems, behaviour and health over time. My current research focuses on the social and political ecologies of human health: the ways informal sociopolitical structures and formal governance and policy interact with lived environments and population characteristics, and how these drive or contribute to behaviours or scenarios that aggregate to population-level health phenomena. I am particularly interested in social behaviour and ecology, demography, spatial statistical methods, and producing social science research that helps public health practitioners improve population health outcomes.
I am the 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 contributing writer to (Those Nerdy Girls)[https://thosenerdygirls.org/] (formerly, Dear Pandemic), an online resource for practical and factual health information where anyone can submit any health-related question and get answers from friendly, knowledgable health experts. I am also trained in human osteoarchaeology, and in the past 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 settler historic archaeological contexts, but my academic training focused on early medieval British contexts.
Some of my research interests include: population health, demography, social and political ecolog(ies) of health and disease, (geo)spatial statistical and analytical methods, social & health inequity/inequality, decision-making and social identity, the life course, COVID-19, (re)emerging infectious disease, antimicrobial resistance, and climate migration. I find complex human systems very interesting, and I want to understand more about how our individual and collective behaviors and decisions produce health environments and disease outcomes.
Dissertation Research
My doctoral research took a population-level systems perspective on health outcomes and behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (US). It examined the roles of political identity and especially presidential candidate preference in the response to COVID-19 and mask-wearing behaviour. It also tested using spatial statistical methods to improve multilevel modelling and poststratification for adjustment of non-representativeness in subnational survey data and small area estimation. Finally, it also considered the relationship between identity, information and social siloes, and decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collaboration
I am always interested in hearing from colleagues with similar or complementary interests, and very much enjoy collaborative research. Please get in touch if you have ideas you want to discuss!