About the KPC
The Kansas Population Center is the main population-related research facility at Kansas State University. Building on the cross-disciplinary and flexible nature of social demography, the KPC connects various campus units working on population studies, and provides an interface through which K-State professionals can interact with national and international research centers and academic communities. It is a depository for socio-demographic data on Kansas and the United States through its role in the U.S. Census Bureau's State Data Center Program.
As once Kansas was part of the geographic frontier, the Kansas Population Center is now working at the frontier of population studies. We place large emphasis on collaborative work within the K-State community, across the country and at the international sphere as well. But since our home is on the range, we also keep our eye on the population dynamics of Kansas and the Great Plains.
The research orientation of the Kansas Population Center is "Population and Social Change" - that is taking the sociological perspective on population change, and studying the impact of population dynamics on social transformation. Population is an active and fundamental component of every society, and its dynamics are interlinked with changes in the social, political, cultural or economic structures.
This determines the mission and philosophy of the Kansas Population Center as well. This philosophy is first of all about collaborative efforts, as the KPC offers professional links for researchers working on various aspects of population and social change. The diversity of research topics at the intersection of population dynamics and social change is astonishing, but it reflects well the diversity of human populations and their social organization. The mission of the KPC is to support innovative, new approaches to demographic and social change, and to demonstrate the inherent diversity of population studies.
We approach population studies in a comprehensive framework. Research is worth the most when it is connected to development activities. We emphasize the importance of the active use of our results by policy makers, planners, community developers and other professionals.
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