Overview
M. Giovanna Merli is Professor of Public Policy, Sociology and Global Health and Director of the Duke University Population Research Institute. Her work straddles demography, Chinese population, society and Chinese diasporas, migration, global health. Her research interests include population and health issues that intersect frontline public policy; the social and behavioral determinants of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases; the evaluation of network-based methods to recruit population representative samples of hard-to-survey, hidden or rare populations; and the application of network sampling approaches to the study of migration and health. A new project links origin and destination contexts to study the health outcomes of immigrants from Ghana to the U.S.. She is a Deputy Editor of the journal Demography.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on network dynamics among Chinese immigrants in the United States.
Journal Article International migration (Geneva, Switzerland) · April 2025 We use longitudinal data on the social networks of Chinese immigrants in the United States from 2018-2020 to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communication frequency and friendship formation. Understanding the pandemic's effect on social networ ... Full text CiteStudying Chinese immigrants' spatial distribution in the Raleigh-Durham area by linking survey and commercial data using romanized names.
Journal Article Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society) · January 2025 Many population surveys do not provide information on respondents' residential addresses, instead offering coarse geographies like zip code or higher aggregations. However, fine resolution geography can be beneficial for characterizing neighbourhoods, espe ... Full text CiteInsertion et entre-soi : l’immigration chinoise est diverse
Journal Article Population & Sociétés · May 28, 2024 La population immigrée de la France compte aujourd’hui moins de 2 % d’immigrés d’origine chinoise, soit environ 116 000 personnes, qui résident aux deux-tiers en Île-de-France. Les migrants économiques sont plus âgés et moins diplômés que les immig ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Dynamics of Ghanaian immigrants' health in the US: Critical life-stage experiences, social networks, acculturation and selection (GMHeS)
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2024 - 2029Focused Training in Social Networks and Health
Inst. Training Prgm or CMECo-Principal Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2015 - 2026Duke Population Research Center
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2010 - 2026View All Grants