Richard Gisser

Richard Gisser
Born (1939-07-11) July 11, 1939
Vienna
Residence Austria
Citizenship Austrian
Fields Historical demography of Austria
Social and demographic statistics
Trends and projections of population development
Fertility and population policy
Institutions Statistik Austria
Vienna Institute of Demography
Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital
Alma mater University of Vienna

Richard Gisser (born 11 July 1939 in Vienna) is an Austrian demographer who held leading positions at his country's statistical office until his retirement. He was also the long-time director, now deputy director, of the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Biography

Richard Gisser grew up in Lower Austria, finishing high school in 1957. He studied sociology and human geography at the University of Vienna where he received his Ph.D. in 1975 with a doctoral thesis on migration to Vienna. In 1976, he also passed the Staatsexamen in official statistics.

After completing his studies, he did research at the Austrian Institute for Spatial Planning (1964-1968) before changing to the Austrian statistical office (today's Statistik Austria) in 1969. While there, he held a number of leading positions such as director of the Population Statistics Department from 1985 to 2001, until his retirement in 2002.[1] He continues to be a member of the Austrian Statistical Society where he organizes the Demography working group.[2]

Since 1977, Gisser worked at the Austrian Institute for Demography (Institut für Demographie/IfD), as head of the department for Applied Demographic Research.[3] He then became director of this research unit of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) between 1987 and 2001 (with one brief pause). After the institute was restructured to form the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) under the lead of Wolfgang Lutz, Gisser became deputy director and head of the research group on Demography of Austria.[4] Since 2010, VID has been part of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital[5] – a research collaboration project whose other partners are IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and WU/Vienna University of Economics and Business.[6]

Gisser held appointments with various population policy commissions of ÖAW and taught demography at the University of Vienna from 1988 to 2001.

He is the long-time editor-in-chief of Statistische Nachrichten, the monthly bulletin of the Austrian statistical office, and has been on the editing boards of VID's Vienna Yearbook of Population Research[1] since 2003 and of Demografie/Prague[7] since 2013.

In the past decades, Gisser was a permanent delegate for the Austrian government at the European Population Committee of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (1977-2005). He was also a partner in international research collaborations,[8][9][10] taking part in international conferences on population development and as an invited expert on demographic and statistic topics.[11][12][13] He has organized several international expert meetings and published in journals relevant to the field.[14][15]

Gisser's main research topics are the historical demography of Austria, demographic and social statistics, trends and projections of population development as well as the resulting implications for policy measures.[1][16]

He is married and has three children.

Today, his parental home, the "Gisser villa" in Ernstbrunn, is the administrative centre of the Wolf Science Center (WSC).

Memberships

International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP)
European Association for Population Studies (EAPS)
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Demographie (DGD)[17]
Austrian Statistical Society (organizer of the Demography department)

Notable awards

2015 Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class
2004 Bene Merito decoration awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences
1987 Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria

Publications (selection)

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Staff website of the Vienna Institute of Demography
  2. ↑ ÖSG-Website: Members of the board
  3. ↑ European Demographic Information Bulletin (December 1979), Volume 10, Issue 4, pp. 163–164
  4. ↑ Article in Der Standard of 22 January 2002: Demography on the Upswing
  5. ↑ Staff website of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital
  6. ↑ Wittgenstein Centre: "Who we are"
  7. ↑ Editorial board of Demografie
  8. ↑ European contacts page of the National Science Foundation
  9. ↑ Austrian Studies Newsletter (2003) on the IPUMS project of Minnesota Population Center
  10. ↑ (SHARE, 2005)
  11. ↑ Dragana Avramov: People, Demography and Social Exclusion. Population Studies, No. 37. Council of Europe Publishing (2002). Preface p.19
  12. ↑ Entry in the Österreich-Lexikon
  13. ↑ The European Journal of Public Health (2007) on the ISARE II project
  14. ↑ Author page in Demographic Research
  15. ↑ Author entry in Online Handbook Demography published by Berlin Institute for Population and Development
  16. ↑ Meine family—das NÖ Familienjournal 2/2004, p.4: article about a talk on childbearing intentions in Austria at a symposion on the International Family Year 2004 in St. Pölten
  17. ↑ Session chair at 2015 AGM

External links

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