Congratulations to our DPhil student Antonino Polizzi who received the Günther Beyer Award for Best Paper by an Early Career Scholar at this year’s European Population Conference.
Antonino Polizzi won the award for his paper on ‘Why is life expectancy in England and Wales falling behind? A cause-of-death decomposition approach’. The award was presented at the closing ceremony of the European Population Conference 2024 in Edinburgh.
On receiving the award, Antonino Polizzi said ‘I feel honoured to have received this prestigious award and would like to thank those who nominated and selected me for the Günther Beyer Award. Thanks also to my wonderful co-authors Andrea Tilstra, Luyin Zhang and Jennifer Dowd who made this research possible.’
The winning paper finds that external causes in young-to-middle ages, cardiometabolic diseases in middle-to-older ages, and dementia in older ages are key contributors to widening life expectancy gaps between England and Wales, and other European countries.
Antonino’s supervisor Professor Jennifer Dowd, Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Demographic Science Unit said, ‘I couldn’t be happier for Antonino to receive such great recognition for his work from the European Association for Population Studies. This is just the beginning of many great things to come!’
The Günther Beyer Award is awarded to an early career scholar at the European Association for Population Studies’ European Population Conference, in tribute to Dr Günther Otto Kurt Beyer (1904-1983) who was a pioneer of European wide scientific collaboration in population studies.
The Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science presented and exhibited at this year’s European Population Conference in Edinburgh with talks and posters on a variety of demographic topics including life expectancy, population health and international migration.
