IPUMS International Team

Sula SARKAR

Research Scientist

sanb007@umn.edu

IPUMS Data Projects

IPUMS International

IPUMS Global Health - DHS, PMA, and MICS (forthcoming)

Research Interests and Project Expertise

Spatial and Temporal Harmonization; Geographical Information Systems (GIS); Spatial and Environmental Demography; Data Interoperability; Historical Geography; Mapping and Data Visualization

Biography

My association with ISRDI (formerly Minnesota Population Center) began in 2001 when I started working as a graduate research assistant on the National Historical GIS project while pursuing a degree in geography at the University of Minnesota. After completing my PhD in 2006, I became a full-time employee working on international census microdata projects.

As a geographer, I study changing administrative boundaries from one census year to another. A big part of my work at IPUMS deals with harmonizing this changing geography and creating a consistent geographical footprint across time and space. More recently, I work with international health survey datasets including the Demographic Health Surveys (DHS), Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) surveys, and the newest health survey data in the IPUMS family - the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). The goal is to create interoperable geographies by which different surveys and census data can be used in conjunction with one another. I also work on producing datasets and indices that study the social and environmental impacts on people and place and their associated health impacts. Finally, I generate GIS maps that can be used for mapping and visualizing IPUMS-International and IPUMS global health data. My research interests include visualization of census and global health microdata from several countries with special emphasis on migrants and immigrants.

Selected Works

Sarkar, S., Cleveland, L., Silisyene, M. and Sobek, M. 2016. Harmonized Census Geography and Spatio-temporal Analysis: Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women in Africa. ISRDI Working paper #2016-3

Sarkar, S. and Hall, P.K. 2011. Mapping NAPP: Examples of Spatial Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Migration in the North Atlantic Countries Using NAPP Data. Historical Methods, 44: 25-36. ID: 58619054