Melinda Mills


Melinda Mills, is a Canadian and Dutch demographer and sociologist. She is currently the Nuffield Professor of Sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Mills’ research spans a range of interdisciplinary topics at the intersection of demography, sociology, molecular genetics and statistics. Her substantive research specializes in fertility and human reproductive behaviour, assortative mating, labour market, life course and inequality.
She was the Editor-in-Chief of the European Sociological Review, journal of the , where she was also an elected Board Member and was previously Editor of International Sociology, journal of the International Sociological Association.
In 2009 she was elected to the European Academy of Sociology and in 2018 awarded Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to the social sciences. She is a nominated member of for outstanding female academics and scientists and since 2013 is a member of the Council of Advisors for .
In 2017, she received the Ministerial appointment to the Executive Council of the Economic and Social Research Council, UK and was re-appointed in 2018 to the UKRI ESRC. In 2018 she received the Ministerial appointment to serve on the for .

Early life and education

Mills was born in Red Deer, Alberta in Canada and attended River Glen Elementary and Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School. She studied sociology and demography at the University of Alberta, where she obtained an undergraduate BA and an MA. She received her PhD in Demography from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Mills has subsequently taken various PhD and related courses in molecular genetics and bioinformatics. She became dual Dutch citizen in the 2000s.

Career

Before her time at Oxford, Mills worked at the University of Groningen and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Bielelfeld Universität in Germany. Mills was the Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford from 2015-2018.
Mills has an interdisciplinary career spanning topic areas ranging from globalization to genes. She is known for her early work that examined the impact of globalization and uncertainty on the life course in a cross-national comparative perspective. This includes the 2005 book , where she co-developed a theory of how employment, economic and temporal uncertainty impact early life course decisions and Globalization, Uncertainty and Men's Careers: An International Comparison.
She has also published various statistics textbooks using the computer program R to introduce survival and event history techniques and has a forthcoming book on applied quantitative statistical genetics and the use of polygenic scores for beginners.
She is known for her interdisciplinary work on human reproduction and fertility, including the examination of why people postpone parenthood, a review of fertility research in advanced societies, the biodemography of fertility and the impact of educational field and occupations and gender equity on fertility. This work related to two large mid-career research grants first from the Dutch Science Council and later an ERC Consolidator Grant , focussing on the sociological and molecular genetic underpinnings of human reproductive behaviour and gene x environment interaction. She was the first sociologist and demographer to lead a large genome-wide association consortium uncovering genetic loci related to human reproductive behaviour - age at first birth and number of children - published in 2016 in Nature Genetics. She is currently finalizing an extension of this original study.
A related research interest is assortative mating using both standard survey data but also data from large internet dating companies examining differential investments in relationships, dating, and more recently cross-national research into preferences in online internet dating. Mills’ work has also examined nonstandard schedules and chronotypes, examining the impact of nonstandard on partnerships, interactions with children, and childbearing.

Honours

In 2009 she was elected to the European Academy of Sociology. She is a nominated member of for outstanding female academics and Scientists and since 2013 is a member of the Council of Advisors for .
Since 2014, Mills is a Governing Body Member of Nuffield College Oxford.
In 2017, she received the Ministerial appointment to the Executive Council of the Economic and Social Research Council, UK and was re-appointed in 2018 to the UKRI ESRC. In 2018 she received the Ministerial appointment to serve on the for .
Mills was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to the social sciences.
In July 2018 she was elected Fellow of the British Academy.

Selected publications

2017
2016
2015