Demography & Health (Taught)

The great baby bust, ageing communities, migration and climate change – the headlines are dominated by pressing issues facing populations globally. These population trends impact everything from voting behaviour to carbon emissions, labour markets to sexual health, and from family and relationships to economic growth and equality.

Join our MSc Demography and Health to study population dynamics and their interaction with global health. Over one year (full time) or two years (part time or split study), you’ll learn to analyse processes that govern population change, including reproductive behaviour, exposure to health risks, economic growth, and climate change.

Our degree is recognised by the Medical Research Council (MRC), and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for students planning PhD research, and the Population Investigation Committee (PIC). Scholarships from these bodies and others are available each year.

What you will learn

• Learn demographic methods and theory, including population projections; dynamics of fertility, mortality and migration; data science and analytics; life-course research and survival analysis

• Learn to present results of analyses through written and oral presentations

• Take a critical, interdisciplinary approach to the study of population change and its interactions with wider social, political and environmental change

• Discover how we can use evidence-based approaches to develop and evaluate population programmes

• Formulate critical, policy-relevant, research questions and use demographic and health data to address them

• Develop practical skills through student-led seminars, data analysis tasks and mini-research projects.

Please note: applications for the 2026/27 academic year are expected to open in November 2025. This information relates to 2025/26 academic year and will be updated in due course.