Dr Siew-Ean Khoo, Senior Fellow, will retire at the end of 2013 after 15 years with the Australian Demographic & Social Research Institute and its predecessor, the Demography & Sociology Program. 

Siew-Ean's recent research has focussed on Australia's population and demography, particularly in relation to international migration to Australia and its demographic implications. Recent research and publications have examined the factors motivating temporary skilled migration to Australia, settlement outcomes of immigrants and their children, and Australia's changing ethnic demography. She has also written on gender and migration and family formation patterns in Australia.

Siew-Ean has also taught courses in International Migration and Population and Society.

The following interview with Dr Khoo has been reproduced from the Australian Population Association's newsletter, DEMOZ (number 69, 2013).

Interview with Siew-Ean Khoo

Would you please give us a brief overview of your research background?

I studied science as an undergraduate at Harvard. During my third year in college I took a course on Society and Population taught by David Heer and became interested in population studies. I was accepted into the Department of Population Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health to do a Master of Science and then a Doctor of Science in Population Sciences. I have worked at the East-West Population Institute, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, and the Department of Immigration, before joining the ANU where I’ve been doing research and teaching on Australia’s population and demography for the past 15 years.

Which researchers do you most admire?

I would like to answer this question in relation to demographers, rather than researchers. Two names come to mind and they are the professors at Harvard who taught me demography, Tom Pullum and Nathan Keyfitz. They did some very innovative work in demography and were also excellent teachers.

What is your most significant research achievement?

My research on international migration to Australia and the settlement outcomes of immigrants and their children.

What is your most important publication?

I don’t know. My publications address different issues; it’s hard to say which is the most important.

What do you find the most interesting aspects of contemporary demographic research?

New topics and areas of research are always exciting. I also find particularly interesting demographic research that uses innovative ways to analyse data or examine population issues. That it is now possible to link demographic data to other data that are not normally collected for or used in demographic research has also led to some very interesting studies.

What is the most interesting paper you’ve read recently?

This is a difficult question to answer – there are so many interesting papers being published. Because I teach a course in international migration, I try to keep up to date on what is published recently in the main international migration journals. I find many papers in the journal International Migration Review to be very interesting, particularly some recent ones about irregular migration and people smuggling across borders in Europe. I find the papers fascinating in what they are able to tell us about these covert activities and the data and methods that are used.

If there was one data source which currently does not exist that you would love to have available, what would that be and why?

I think Australia has very good demographic, census and survey data and I have been very happy with the various datasets that I have worked with. I try to make the best use of the data sources that are available for each research project that I work on. Where specific research projects have required data that are not available, we have also been fortunate to obtain the funding to collect the data that we need. So I have to say that I don’t have any unmet data needs!

Describe one piece of demographic research that you wanted to pursue but never got around to.

None. I’m very fortunate to have the opportunities to work on many interesting research projects covering a wide variety of topics and issues, from fertility, families and households to migration, ethnic diversity, longitudinal studies of immigrant settlement and the second generation’s demographic and social outcomes, to name just a few.

If you hadn’t become a researcher, what would you have been?

I would be working in government or the non-profit sector.

What are your immediate plans after you retire at the end of the year?

I’m looking forward to more leisure time at home and to enjoy my hobbies.