Prof Guy Abel
Professor
9.08, 9/F., The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus
+852 3917 2057
I am a statistical demographer working predominantly with migration data to better predict past and future movement patterns and gain a richer understanding of how migration varies by core demographic variables such as age, sex and education. Prior to joining the HKU Department of Sociology, I was a professor at the Asian Demographic Research Institute based at Shanghai University and a researcher at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
I have also worked as a consultant for Facebook, the International Organization for Migration, International Labour Organization and the World Bank and taught courses on using R at the KOSTAT-UNFPA Summer Seminar on Population.
Ph.D. University of Southampton
I am happy to supervise doctoral students who are interested in:
Developing statistical methods and machine learning models to estimate internal and international migration patterns.
Exploring digital trace data to monitor migration trends and patterns.
Conducting cross-national comparisons of migration by key demographic characteristics to find regularities in migration patterns.
Developing computational methods to help process, analyse, and visualise demographic data.
Recently published papers on techniques for estimating migration patterns using digital trace data, migration and climate change, migration and education and measuring global migration.
2021, 2022, 2023 Elsevier Award for Highly Cited Chinese Researcher in Sociology
Abel, G.J. and Sander, N. (2014). Quantifying global international migration flows. Science. 343 (6178) 1520–1522.
Abel, G.J., Bakarat, B., K.C., S. and Lutz, W. (2016). Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals leads to lower world population growth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (50) 14294–14299
Abel, G.J. and Cohen J. E. (2019). Bilateral international migration flow estimates for 200 countries. Nature Scientific Data. 6 (82)
Abel, G.J., Brottrager, M., Crespo Cuaresma, J., Muttarak, R. (2019) Climate, Conflict and Forced Migration. Global Environmental Change. 54, 239–249.
Abel, G.J. and Cohen J. E. (2022) Bilateral international migration flow estimates updated and refined by sex. Nature Scientific Data. 9 (1), 1-11