Introduction

Hilde Bras is Professor of Economic and Social History, with special attention to Global Demography and Health at the History Department of the University of Groningen. Her current research focuses on long-term changes in reproduction and health in sub-Saharan Africa. She earned a Master’s degree (hons) in American Studies (1993) from the University of Groningen and a PhD in Sociology (2002) from Utrecht University. Bras has published on fertility, nutrition and health, gender and social inequalities, marriage, migration, and long-term shifts in family and kinship relations in, amongst others, Continuity and Change, The History of the Family, Demography, Population Studies, Demographic Research, Journal of Biosocial Science and Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. From 2011 to 2016 she led the NWO-funded VIDI-project “The Power of the Family. Family Influences on Long-Term Fertility Decline in Europe, 1850-2010”. Bras is an elected member of the Social Sciences Council (Sociaal-Wetenschappelijke Raad) and alumna of De Jonge Akademie of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Senior Research Associate of the Global Data Lab (Radboud University), Chair of the Nominating Committee of the Social Science History Association (2020-2021), board member of the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN), and editorial board member of the The History of the Family.