Hilde Bras

Hilde Bras is Aletta Jacobs Professor and Chair of Economic and Social History, with special attention to Global Demography and Health at the Department of History of the University of Groningen. Her research interests are in the fields of historical demography, child and adolescent health, life course sociology, and social inequalities. 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, migration, social mobility, long-term family change, marriage, and child nutritional status in, among others, 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”. In her current research she comparatively studies women’s reproductive careers during fertility transition in 19th-century Europe, mid-twentieth century Asia, and contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.