About us

Why Birth Cohorts?

Birth cohorts are increasingly recognised as important for understanding how biological, social, and environmental processes interact over time to affect human health. This makes them central to an emerging terrain of what has been described as ‘biosocial’ research which aims to investigate how social life ‘gets under the skin’ to bring about disease.

We believe there is an urgent need to co-ordinate and consolidate emerging efforts in this area, to ensure that biological and social science research benefits from productive cross-disciplinary engagement.

Our ethos

This network enables a community of international researchers to examine the social, ethical, and methodological challenges and opportunities of developing innovative cross-disciplinary research within and around birth cohort studies.

We are the first network dedicated to both critically examining and intervening on the co-production of birth cohorts and biosocial science. Our members are committed to enhancing productive and effective dialogue between different disciplines.

Where we work

Researchers in the BBCR network with birth cohorts from across the globe