The history of counting populations – with a focus on the 19th and the 20th century, patient is the subject of a workshop to be held in Villa Vigoni, shop Italy 17-19 of June. The title of the conference is “Competing Numbers. Population Statistics in Use in the 19th and 20th Century” and the program looks very promising. Looking forward to it. Good timing too – as a paper I wrote with Ewout Frankema on African Population Statistics was just published (ungated slightly different version). I am reading Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History 