Michail Raftakis is currently a postdoctoral fellow for the ERC funded project GENPOP at the University of Bologna. He specializes in historical demography and was previously employed at the University of Sassari. He obtained his PhD from Newcastle University in the UK in 2019. His research focuses, among other topics, on the mortality transition, cause-specific mortality, public health, and gender discrimination practices. He has published widely in various journals, including Population Studies, Economic History Review, Population Space and Place, and Demographic Research.