M. Giovanna Merli

M. Giovanna Merli is Professor of Public Policy, Sociology, and Global Health at Duke University. She serves as Director of the Duke Population Research Center and Associate Director of the Duke University Population Research Institute.

Her research applies demographic methods to the study of fertility and mortality in China and Vietnam, while also advancing innovative approaches for studying hidden and hard-to-reach populations. For example, she has employed network sampling and the collection of ego-centric network data in population-representative surveys to explore the behavioral and relational determinants of HIV and other sexually transmitted disease transmission in China and South Africa, immigrant health, and social integration among Chinese immigrant populations in the United States, France, and Sub-Saharan Africa as well as African immigrants in the US. Her current work includes a project linking origin and destination contexts to examine the health of immigrants from Ghana to the U.S. She is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of Demography, the flagship journal of the Population Association of America.