Supported by approximately 50 years of professional excellence, Dr. John F. May is well-regarded in higher education for his expertise in demography and population policies. Since 2020, he has served as a research professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. Concurrently, Dr. May was an honorary professor at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, from 2021 to 2023 and a senior fellow at the Population Institute in Washington, D.C., from 2018 to 2021.
Previously, Dr. May thrived in several academic and research-oriented roles across the globe. Having taught extensively in Brussels, Belgium, he also served as a population specialist and long-term consultant in the African region of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where he was also a co-coordinator of the World Bank Population and Reproductive Health Thematic Group. Likewise, he served as a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development and a visiting scholar at the Population Reference Bureau. With past tenures as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a senior associate and senior scientist at Futures Group International, Dr. May was distinguished for his role as a population training coordinator at the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in Belgium. He also worked as a United Nations advisor on demography and population statistics for the South Pacific Commission in New Caledonia and as a United Nations associate expert in demography in Haiti.
Highly educated, Dr. May studied in Belgium at the Catholic University of Louvain, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in modern history in 1973. Subsequently, he received a graduate diploma in demography in 1975 and graduated magna cum laude with a Master of Arts in demography in 1985. After accruing years in his field, he sought higher education at Paris Descartes University in France, graduating summa cum laude with a Doctor of Philosophy in demography in 1996.
Among the many highlights of his career, Dr. May is celebrated for his authorship of the book “World Population Policies: Their Origin, Evolution, and Impact” in 2012, which won the Global Media Award for the best book in population the same year. He also recently co-edited the “International Handbook of Population Policies” in 2022. Throughout his career, he has attended numerous conferences, symposia and universities as a keynote speaker, lecturer and presenter and authored and/or co-authored several book chapters, articles, op-eds and podcasts. Looking ahead, Dr. May aims to organize a population conference in Brussels and complete a new book on population policy that is scheduled for publication at the end of 2025.
