EDSD: an international training program for students wishing to become demographers
The European Doctoral School of Demography is an 11-month training program for young researchers wishing to specialize in demography; EDSD program students take courses in both France and Germany. Program graduates readily find jobs thanks to the EDSD’s many partners and renown.
Arlette Simo-Fotso is a researcher and director of the EDSD. She works on health, inequality, and disability.
What does EDSD have to offer students?
The European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD) is a top-level training program in demography created twenty years ago and designed to train young university students who would like to do a PhD or continue PhD work already underway.
The program provides future graduates with solid scientific knowledge and understanding of the causes and effects of demographic changes of all kinds, population data analysis, mathematical and statistical demography and modeling, simulation, and forecasting. Courses are taught by internationally recognized specialists among the best in their respective areas of expertise.
EDSD is fully open to the interdisciplinary approach, enabling students to become familiar with other disciplines and thereby to enrich their scientific understanding.
Finally, because the program is international, it offers young researchers precious resources for developing networks that will be particularly useful in their career as demographers. The program is open to candidates of all nationalities and attracts applicants from all continents every year. The 20 students selected for the 2025-2026 academic year are from four continents and of eleven different nationalities—a clear opportunity for participants to develop a worldwide demographer network.
What specific courses are offered at the EDSD?
Students take approximately 15 courses over the eleven-month session. Courses are divided into the following two categories:
Two-month preparatory courses held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. Here the emphasis is on reinforcing students’ quantitative and programing skills, by way of the following 4 courses: Measures and Models in Demography, Basic Mathematics for Demographers, Basic Statistics for Demographers, and Computer Programming for Demographers.
Students spend the remaining nine months at INED, in France, taking fundamental demography courses; INED has been in charge of this part of the program for the last two years. Here the aim is to hone and deepen students’ theoretical understanding and methodological skills. They take 11 courses broken down into modules: Formal Demography, Statistical Demography, Population Data Science, Population Challenges, and Simulation and Forecasting, as well as a thesis seminar that trains students in thesis writing and oral defense and assesses individual performance through oral presentations and group activities.
What makes this program different from other demographic study programs?
EDSD differs from other demography training programs in being international; that is, by the geographic diversity of its students and teachers and the fact that it’s held on different campuses in different countries. Moreover, the program has a considerable number of European partner institutions that award between 15 and 20 scholarships that fully cover selected students’ needs. These features make EDSD a program of excellence whose graduates are particularly sought after by institutions that handle population questions.
Do we know about what EDSD students recently at INED to do the program have done since then? Do you follow their post-program outcomes?
EDSD has been hosted at INED since 2023. Nearly all the students who’ve been at INED in the EDSD training framework have obtained funding to begin a doctoral thesis, either in France or abroad. For example, all students in the 2024-2025 cohort received funding offers, three of them in French institutions or universities.
Over the longer term—and though it’s still a little early to assess the situations of the two cohorts who studied at INED—experience has shown that, given EDSD excellence and renown, graduates have no difficulty entering the job market and finding positions in universities and institutions specialized in demographic questions. In fact, some current EDSD teachers are themselves program graduates.
