Congratulations to the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science’s Dr Charles Rahal who has been promoted to Associate Professor in Data Science and Informatics at the University of Oxford.
Dr Charles Rahal receives the Associate Professorship title for his contributions to research, teaching and academic service within Oxford and beyond.
Professor Melinda Mills, Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Demographic Science Unit, said, ‘We are delighted that the University of Oxford has given Charlie Rahal the Associate Professorship title in recognition of his excellent research, teaching and administrative service. His work in the area of data science, informatics and computational science is a vital underpinning of our ethos and approach at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, which will only continue to grow under his leadership.’
Dr Rahal was a founding member of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science before becoming a Senior Research Lecturer and now Associate Professor. He is a key figure in social science methodology and applied social data science research who has published in high-profile journals across disciplines including Nature Climate Change, AI and Society, Nature Human Behaviour, the American Sociological Review, Nature Genetics, and the International Journal of Epidemiology.
The interdisciplinary nature of Dr Rahal’s work is most evident in his academic service across Oxford and beyond. At Oxford, he is a member of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science’s Senior Management team, an Associate Member of Nuffield College, and a senior member of the Reproducible Research Oxford (RROx). Beyond Oxford, Dr Rahal is a Co-Investigator at the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Centre for Care, an institutional Local Network Lead for the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), and sits on various external advisory boards such as the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Adult Social Care Methods Advisory Group.
Dr Rahal is also an advocate of the Open Science movement and has made pivotal contributions to many Centre publications, projects and novel datasets such as the GWAS Diversity Monitor.
On top of all this, Dr Rahal teaches and supervises across the University, develops courses on programming and demographic methods, and helps to convene initiatives such as the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science and the Oxford | Berlin School in Responsible and Reproducible Research.
Dr Charles Rahal, Associate Professor at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Demographic Science Unit, said, ‘It remains a sincere honour to work with such wonderful colleagues at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and across the University. Demography at Oxford continues to go from strength to strength as we earnestly continue to tackle the most challenging global problems of our time.’
