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Maria Gargiulo

Department, Institution: Department of Population Health
UBEL Pathway: Demography
Supervisor: Dr José Manuel Aburto and Dr Anushé Hassan
Contact details: maria.gargiulo@lshtm.ac.uk
About Me:
I am currently a student at the European Doctoral School of Demography and will begin my PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Fall 2024. I completed my MPhil in sociology and demography at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) and my BS in statistics & data science and Spanish at Yale University. In my spare time I drink tea and read fiction.
My Research:

My research uses demographic and statistical methods to study human rights violations in contexts where data is messy, incomplete, or missing altogether. My dissertation project will examine the impacts of two simultaneous epidemics of violence—feminicide (the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender) and disappearances—on population health in Mexico. My project will consist of three interrelated components that will make conceptual and methodological contributions to the study of the impacts of gender-based violence on population health: (1) leveraging novel data sources to complement administrative records; (2) applying cutting-edge quantitative methods for indirect estimation; and (3) using these estimates to adjust life tables and re-examine the impacts of violence on life expectancy and lifespan inequality.

Impact of My Research:

My conceptual work will improve our understanding of how gender-based violence is impacting women’s health. This is a crucial step towards designing violence prevention policies that can reduce the specific forms of violence women experience, which differ qualitatively from the types of violence men experience and have historically been understudied. Additionally, this work will help offer a more comprehensive panorama of the ways that lethal violence associated with the so-called “war on drugs” is impacting the health of the general population. My methodological work addressing missing data about violence is relevant beyond the case of Mexico and can be applied to areas experiencing high levels of violence or where civil registration and vital statistics systems are deficient.