Nathalie Williams

About

Nathalie Williams is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, obtained in 2009. Her research focuses on demographic responses to armed conflict, natural disasters, and climate change, with particular interest in migration during these events. She has published work on population growth, marriage, fertility, bereavement, and how disparities in perceptions of risk influence behavioral choices during disasters and war. Williams employs statistical analysis of survey data and agent-based simulation models for her studies and is involved in developing new data collection strategies and conceptualization methods. Her work is primarily based in Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Persian Gulf. Additionally, she is the Principal Investigator of the Sound Data Survey Project, which aims to collect high-quality data on the Puget Sound population to inform policy-making and programming, involving hands-on training for students in survey data collection methods.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Geography
• Economic geography
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Ecology
• Demographic economics
• Business

Selected publications

• Climate Change and Migration: New Insights from a Dynamic Model of Out-Migration and Return Migration

  American Journal of Sociology · 2020 · 71 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In popular accounts, stories of environmental refugees convey a bleak picture of the impacts of climate change on migration. Scholarly research is less conclusive, with studies finding varying effects. This paper uses an agent-based model (ABM) of land use, social networks, and household dynamics to examine how extreme floods and droughts affect migration in Northeast Thailand. The ABM explicitly models the dynamic and interactive pathways through which climate-migration relationships might oper…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Husbands’ migration: increased burden on or more autonomy for wives left behind?

  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2019-10-16 · 38 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Migration of men has important influences on reshaping family and gender roles in left-behind wives. However, it is unclear whether husbands' out-migration increases the burden on or creates autonomy for left-behind wives. Using new data from Nepal, we examine the associations of husband's out-migration and remittance status with the work burden and autonomy of left-behind wives'. Results of our multi-level multivariate analyses show that the number of months a husband migrated internationally d…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• When Does Social Capital Matter for Migration? A Study of Networks, Brokers, and Migrants in Nepal

  International Migration Review · 2020 · 29 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The study of social capital has been one of the strongest areas of recent advance in migration research, but there are still many questions about how it works and why it has varying effects in studies of different places. In this article, we address the contextual variation in social capital's effects on migration by considering migration brokers. We argue that destinations for which migration is logistically difficult to arrange give rise to brokerage industries and hypothesize that brokers in…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Spatial and temporal dimensions of weather shocks and migration in Nepal

  Population and Environment · 2019-12-13 · 29 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fear of violence during armed conflict: Social roles and responsibilities as determinants of fear

  Social Science Research · 2018-01-16 · 27 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R00HD067587

  NIH · $636k · 2016

• NIH Grant K99HD067587

  NIH · $150k · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• Dirgha J. Ghimire

  13 shared

• Arland Thornton

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  12 shared

• Linda Young‐DeMarco

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  12 shared

• William G. Axinn

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  8 shared

• Xiaozheng Yao

  National Cancer Institute

  8 shared

• Prem Bhandari

  University of Maryland Eastern Shore

  8 shared

• Jeffrey Swindle

  Harvard University Press

  7 shared

• Barbara Entwisle

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  7 shared

Labs

• Nathalie Williams LabPI

Awards & honors

• ATD: Geospatial Graphical Models of Human Response to Emerge…

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Kyle Crowderh-51
• Alexes Harrish-18
• Julie Brinesh-16