CV

Education

London School of Economics and Political Science, September 2022 - September 2026 (expected)
PhD student in the Department of Methodology
Funded by ESRC scholarship

University of Southampton, September 2019 - December 2020
MSc Demography, Distinction
Thesis: Spatial autocorrelation of fertility outcomes within England and Wales at the neighbourhood level

Univeristy of Leeds, September 2015 - July 2019
BA Geography, First with honours
Thesis: The effect of educational differentiation on fertility within the UK, a population projection

Exchange programme

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, October 2017 - September 2018
Political Science and Sociology

Work experience

London School of Economics and Political Science, January 2023 - present
Graduate teaching assistant
Special Topics in Quantitative Text Analysis

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, September 2020 - August 2022
Vienna Institute of Demography,
Research assistant in the “Family and Fertility” and “Demography of Austria” groups. Project: Births and other life goals: complementary or competition?

Scholarships & Awards

Poster session winners, March 2021
Population Association of America
From the Stork to Fertility Apps. Rampazzo, F. (presenter), Raybould, A., Rampazzo, P., Barker, R.

MSc Scholarship, September 2019 - September 2020
Population Investigation Committee
Competitive scholarship given to two British students pursuing a career in Demography

Grebenik Award, July 2019
University of Leeds
Best Population-Geography dissertation

Publications

Barker, R, Buber-Ennser, I. (2022). Uncertainty and flexibility of fertility intentions. VID Working Paper 03/2022. https://doi.org/10.1553/0x003e60ec

Rampazzo, F., Raybould A., Rampazzo, P., Barker, R, Leasure, D. R. (2022). “UPDATE: I’m pregnant!”: Inferring global use of fertility tracking apps. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/2va3n

Manuscripts in progress

Barker, R., Geerts, A., Rampazzo, F., Rampazzo, P., Leasure, D. It’s a match! A global view on the use of online dating applications.

Barker, R., Minkus, L. The changing context of the word ‘childless’ in British media from 1969 to 2023.

Talks

Population Association of America 2023 Annual Meeting, April 2023
Uncertainty and Flexibility of Fertility Intentions. Barker, R., Buber-Ennser, I (presenter).

Population Association of America 2023 Annual Meeting, April 2023
It’s a match! A global view on the positioning and use of online dating apps. Barker, R, Geerts, A., Rampazzo, F (presenter)., Rampazzo, Leasure, D.

The Quest for a Partner in the Past and Today. Researching Data from Matchmaking Media and Agencies, January 2023
It’s a match! A global view on the positioning and use of online dating apps. Barker, R (presenter), Geerts, A., Rampazzo, F., Rampazzo, Leasure, D.

Invited seminar, Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography (MPIDR), June 2022
The possible case for web scraping and natural langauge processing in family demography. Barker, R.

Generations and Gender Programme User Conference 2021, October 2021
An exploration of uncertainty and flexibility in fertility intentions. Barker, R (presenter)., Buber-Ennser, I.

Wittgenstein Centre Colloquium, July 2021
From the Stork to Fertility Apps. Rampazzo, F., Raybould, A., Rampazzo, P., Barker, R (presenter).

British Society of Population Studies Conference, April 2021
From the Stork to Fertility Apps. Rampazzo, F., Raybould, A., Rampazzo, P., Barker, R (presenter).

Copy editing

European Demographic Data Sheet 2022. Wittgenstein Centre.

Computer Skills

Languages - R, Python

Applications - LaTeX

Version control - git

Outside Training

Nuffield College, University of Oxford - Summer Institute of Computational Social Science July 2022

Hertie School - Data Science Summer School (Online) July 2021

IMPRS-PHDS/IDEM - Topics in Digital and Computational Demography (Online) November 2020

Barcelona RECSM Summer School (Online) June 2020