Mr John-Jairo  Loja Bsc in Economics, Bsc Sociology, MSc Demography

Postgraduate Researcher (PGR)

John-Jairo Loja is a doctoral researcher at the University of Southampton, department of Social Statistics and Demography.

His research focuses on mortality differences among Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and White-Mestizo groups in Latin American countries, particularly in Colombia. He is particularly interested in understanding mortality patterns, causes of death, and mortality under-registration in ethnic populations.

He holds a BSc. in Economics and a BSc in Sociology, both from the Universidad del Valle, Colombia, and an MSc in Demography from the Universität Rostock, Germany. He has been Visiting Research Fellow at a number of research centres and institutes, including the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.

Alongside his doctoral studies, John is currently co-investigator in a racial-ethnic study about “Social Inequalities in the Colombian ethnic population” at the Universidad del Valle (2021), and has contributed to two country-wide initiatives based at the University of Southampton: data analysis at the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM-UK), and a mortality study at the Center for Population Change (CPC-UK).

John is keen to share his knowledge and train the next generation in his role as educator and is thus Teaching Assistant in Research Methods, Demography I and II at the University of Southampton. He also contributes more widely to the discipline with services such as reviewing for the Latin American Demography journal Revista Latinoamericana de Población (RELAP).

In his free time, he is enthusiastic about Latin American dance styles, and hopes to contribute more with this aspect of the Latin culture to the broader Southampton community of music lovers