Orsola Torrisi

My research focuses on the demography of crises and violence. I am particularly interested in issues of family formation, sexual and reproductive health and population change in contexts affected by armed conflict and disasters. Part of my research examines the consequences of armed violence on the other forms of violence, including domestic abuse and obstetric violence. More recently, I have started to work on issues of measurement and on the development of new methods to measure demographic trends in countries with limited data.

My work is interdisciplinary. I combine theoretical approaches from demography, economics, development studies and sociology with standard demographic, causal and spatial methods. I focus on low- and middle-income settings, particularly in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. I also have research interests and experience in the Middle East, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. 

With my research, I aim to expand and advance knowledge on how crises and uncertainty due to violence affect family formation decision-making in unstable settings and, hence, in often under-studied populations. You can read some of my research articles in Science Advances, Population and Development Review, World Development, Population Reasearch & Policy Review, European Journal of Population, Journal of Marriage and Family and Field Methods. 

I obtained two Master's degrees (MSc) from the LSE - one in Demography (2016) and one in Social Research Methods (2017) - and a BA in Political Economy (2015) from King's College London. I am a member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), the British Society for Population Studies (BSPS), the Population Association of America (PAA), the Italian Association for Population Studies (AISP), the Population Health in Armed Conflict (PHAC) and the Households in Conflict Networks (HiCN).