Marion Burkimsher
Affiliate
researcher of the University of Lausanne
My original doctoral research was in Geography at Manchester
University, and I still retain a high level of interest in spatial and
temporal variations, and in particular inter-country comparisons.
After a career break to bring up our two sons, I started to become more
involved in academic matters by editing papers on the subject of
demography, primarily for the United Nations Economic Commission for
Europe (UNECE). In doing so, I discovered that the field of demography
was fascinating, considerably more so than the process of linguistic
editing. Therefore in 2005 I enrolled on the new Masters course in
Demography at the University of Geneva. At the end of two years of
study, I carried out a three-month internship at the UNECE and
completed a dissertation based on statistical analyses of fertility
data from Bulgaria, Hungary and Georgia.
While examining the variables in the databases of the Generations and
Gender Survey from those three countries, some very interesting
patterns of religious attendance became apparent. In particular there
was evidence of a religious revival taking place, primarily in the
Orthodox faith in Georgia, where young people are considerably more
active participants than older people. Recently I have been involved in
setting up a collaboration of researchers from Switzerland and Georgia
to investigate this phenomenon in more depth.
Since completing the Masters’ programme in 2008, I have been following
two strands of interest – fertility trends and religious trends – as an
independent researcher, with the aim of producing significant results
in these fields. Some of these results have been published as papers,
with more in the pipeline, while in other cases they have been
presented in international conferences and seminars (see links below).
My current interests can be summarised as follows:
- Inter-country comparisons
- Period, age and cohort effects
- Statistical analyses of large
data sets
- Secularisation and revival
- Measures of dispersion,
convergence and divergence
- The three-way correlations of
fertility, religiosity and ‘happiness’
I am currently following my research interests independently with the
aim of publishing the results in relevant demographic and religious
research journals, whilst maintaining links with the Universities of
Lausanne and Geneva. I am a member of the Sociology of Religion Study
Group of the British Sociological Association (SOCREL), the Society for
the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) and the European Association
for Population Studies (EAPS).
Over the coming years, I plan to continue to research religious and
fertility trends, and I hope to be able to collaborate in various
international projects as the opportunities arise.
Updated May 2012
