The David Hume Institute, in partnership with National Records of Scotland, welcomed Professor Michael Anderson, Dr Esther Roughsedge and Rannvá Danielsen from Seafish to discuss regional variations and trends that exist within Scotland’s populations, and what they mean for Scotland and Scottish policy. 

Professor Michael Anderson is Emeritus Professor of Economic History, University of Edinburgh, and an expert on Scottish demography. Last year, Oxford University Press published ‘Scotland's Populations: from the 1850s to Today’, which, using a comparative framework both internationally and across Scotland, explores population growths and declines, rural settlement and depopulation, and migration and emigration.

Dr Esther Roughsedge is a statistician at the National Records of Scotland (NRS), with 15 years’ experience of demographic statistics. She now leads the Statistical Promotion and Analysis team, focussing on talking to a wider audience about the implications of statistical trends. Before moving to NRS, she worked as a statistician in the Scottish Government.

Rannvá Danielsen is an economist at Seafish, a public body that supports the UK seafood industry. Her expertise is in fisheries economics and policy. Seafish collects extensive data on the seafood industry and has written a series of reports on the impact of migration policy on labour availability and recruitment in the seafood processing sector.

A copy of the slides from each presentation is available for download here: