Rachel Franklin

Rachel Franklin is Executive Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA), housed within the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS).

Before joining the CGA, she was Professor of Geographic Analysis in the Center for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University and the Group Leader for Livability in the Science of Cities and Regions program at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national institute for data science and AI. Prior to that she was the Associate Director of the Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4) initiative and Associate Professor (Research) in Population Studies at Brown University.

A spatial demographer (or population geographer, depending who’s asking), Rachel’s primary research focus is the interplay between spatial analytics and demographic change, in particular quantifying patterns, sources, and impacts of spatial inequality. She likes new, old, and big data, especially when it’s spatial and particularly when it’s deployed in response to new, old, and big societal challenges—right now she’s especially excited about satellite imagery for social science and health research and policymaking.