Kieron Barclay
Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, SCAS
Associate Professor of Sociology, Stockholm University
Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock

Photo: Johan Wahlgren
Kieron Barclay completed his PhD in Sociology at Stockholm University in 2014. Before being awarded the Pro Futura Scientia Fellowship, Barclay spent time at the University of Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). As a Research Assistant Professor at the LSE, and as Deputy Head of the Laboratory of Population Health at the MPIDR, Barclay developed an independent line of research examining the intersection of health and fertility from a demographic perspective. In 2018, Barclay received the European Demographer Award for early career achievements.
Barclay’s research examines how family circumstances affect health and mortality in contemporary high-, middle-, and low-income countries, as well as historical contexts. For example, his research has addressed how health affects childbearing, and how an individual's reproductive history affects their post-reproductive mortality. A primary focus of Barclay’s work has been to examine the consequences of parental fertility decisions for their children, such as how parental age at the time of birth, or spacing between births, affects the educational and socioeconomic attainment of children, as well as their health and mortality.
As a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, Barclay will examine the impact of the family of origin on health inequalities, taking a global, historical, multigenerational, and comparative perspective. The goal of this work is to develop a deeper understanding of how the family influences health inequalities, how this has changed over time, and the underlying factors explaining that variation. His interdisciplinary research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Demography; Population and Development Review; Social Forces; American Journal of Epidemiology, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2024-25.