Leslie Root

Leslie Root is a demographer and assistant professor of research in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the associate director of the University of Colorado Population Center. Her research is in the fields of fertility and sexual and reproductive health, and current projects center on the effect of social forces - contraceptive access, the COVID pandemic, and pronatalist policies - on individuals' fertility over the life course. She also studies population politics, abortion, and the demography of pregnancy and the perinatal period. She has regional expertise in the United States and the former Soviet Union. She holds a PhD in demography from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MA in Eurasian, Russian, and East European studies from Georgetown University.