Researchers and Collaborators

Letícia Marteleto, a sociologist and social demographer at the University of Pennsylvania, studies how social disadvantages and reproductive processes interact across the life course, especially amid structural shocks like epidemics.

Her current research focuses on the impact of the Zika and Covid-19 crises on women’s fertility. As Principal Investigator of the DZC Longitudinal Study (funded by NICHD), she has collected population-based data for eight years, showing how public health crises profoundly change women’s reproductive preferences and behaviors while deepening structural inequalities.

Marteleto’s work is methodologically innovative, combining panel surveys, interviews, and diverse data collection modes. Her findings have appeared in top journals like American Sociological Review and Demography, with funding from the NIH and NSF, and have received extensive media coverage.

Sandra Valongueiro Alves (Ph.D. in Demography, University of Texas at Austin) is a medical doctor from the State University of Pernambuco (UPE). Dr. Valongueiro Alves also has a M.A. in demography from the Federal University of Minas Gerais – UFMG. She has been a researcher at the Graduate Program in Public Health at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Recife, since 2006. Dr. Valongueiro Alves has worked in public health, focusing on maternal mortality and abortion, gender-based violence, reproductive health, and information on mortality. Currently, Dr. Valongueiro Alves is involved with MERG (Microcephaly Epidemic Research Group). She is also a member of the Maternal Mortality Committee of Pernambuco. Sandra is a collaborator for the DZC Project.

Raquel Zanatta Coutinho is an associate professor in Demography at Cedeplar/UFMG. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master’s in Demography from UFMG, where she also completed a post-doctoral fellowship (Capes).

Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive health, particularly maternal health, examining the role of contextual factors and inequality in mediating reproductive intentions and outcomes. Dr. Coutinho currently leads the extension project “Sentidos do Nascer” (UFMG/FACE) and serves as a co-investigator for the DZC Project.

Molly Dondero is an Associate Professor of Sociology at American University in Washington, D.C. and Fulbright-Iméra-Aix-Marseille Université Chair in Migration Studies (2024-2025). She is a sociologist and social demographer whose research examines how population-level inequality in health and well-being emerges along three key axes of stratification—immigration, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—in highly racially diverse societies. She has developed this broad focus through two lines of research: 1) the consequences of immigration for health and well-being throughout the life course, and 2) racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health and well-being. Her work research makes use of large-scale quantitative data sources to examine emerging and enduring social problems and articulate the complex structural forces that create and maintain inequality.

As a co-investigator of DZC, she examines the social patterning of reproductive health consequences of the Zika epidemic and Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. Prior to joining the faculty at American University, she was a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University.

Sneha Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is a social demographer who studies the determinants and consequences of global family change. Her research focuses on understanding how/why family dynamics are changing across the Global South, and what these changes mean for the health and wellbeing of aging individuals and young adults. Prior to coming to Northwestern, Sneha was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin with the DZC project. She holds a PhD in Development Sociology with a concentration in Population and Development from Cornell University. Sneha is a co-investigator for the DZC Project.

Alexandre Gori Maia, a Full Professor at the Institute of Economics, UNICAMP, holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the same institution.

His research utilizes applied econometrics and development economics, concentrating on demographic, social, and environmental economics. Recent work includes evaluating the impact of health crises on reproductive behavior (in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania) and assessing the effects of social media on socioeconomic behavior (funded by CNPq). Additionally, he studies economic development policies (FAPESP funded) and climate resilience strategies in Brazil (with EMBRAPA). Gori Maia is also a co-investigator for the DZC Project.

Raphael Nishimura (Ph.D. in Survey Methodology, University of Michigan) is the Director of Sampling Operations of the Survey Research Operations (SRO) within the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR). He has been working with sampling and survey statistics for over ten years. His main research interest includes sampling methods, survey nonresponse and adaptive/responsive designs. He is also the director of the Sampling Program for Survey Statisticians of the SRC Summer Institute for Survey Research Techniques. Raphael is a collaborator for the DZC Project.

Jenny Trinitapoli (Ph.D. in Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin) is the director of the Center for International Social Science Research at the University of Chicago. Her work bridges the fields of social demography and the sociology of religion. She has written extensively about the role of religion in the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2008, she has been the principal investigator of Tsogolo la Thanzi, an ongoing longitudinal study of young adults in Malawi, which asks how young adults negotiate relationships, sex, and childbearing in the midst of a severe AIDS epidemic. Trinitapoli is the author of An Epidemic of Uncertainty (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and co-author of Religion and AIDS in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2012). Jenny is a co-investigator for the DZC Project.

Ângelo Santos is an applied microeconomist working on development and environmental economics. He has received his PhD degree from the University of Houston. Before that, he received his Master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.

His research addresses critical issues such as deforestation and air pollution, aiming to develop effective policies to mitigate these challenges.

Ângelo is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and Scientific Production Coordinator for the DZC project.