Population Histories in Context: Reviewing past achievements and future directions. (360G-Wellcome-103476_Z_14_Z)

This meeting uses the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Cambridge group for the History of Population to assess the major achievements and the most important future areas of historical demographic enquiry. Four of the six themes and around which the meeting is focused have particularly strong links with medical history and funds are sought to assist in bringing 6 key scholars based overseas to give papers at this meeting. These themes concern respectively the epidemiologic al changes that underwrite the initial stage of the mortality revolution between c. 1650 and 1800 in which urban centres played a key role; the onset of fertility control in the nineteenth century the methods and motives for which are still hotly debated; the most important ongoing demographic development is population ageing, the origins of which are poorly documented and nominally linked family data from natural fertility historic populations can be employed to identify robust ageing genotype- phenotype associations as well as welfare issues in family demography; historical demographic research on Asia has progressed to offer comparisons of central demographic parameters with those documented for western Europe and especially for England in which the work of the Cambridge Group has been vital.