Economics professor Seth Sanders has been named the new director of the Duke University Population Research Institute (DuPRI), an affiliate of the Social Science Research Institute, the provost's office announced.
DuPRI's research focus includes aging, health and family, fertility, and migration. Its mission is to organize all population research at Duke, attract to the Duke faculty some of the field's most acclaimed researchers and new talent; and to expand the intellectual activity at Duke devoted to population research in the classroom, laboratory and field.
Sanders takes over for James Vaupel, the founding DuPRI director. Sanders was recommended by a committee headed by economics professor V. Joseph Hotz.
"We have collected at Duke a most unusual group of interdisciplinary faculty who can, and will, do extraordinary collaborative work that cuts across disciplines in the social sciences and beyond," said Susan Roth, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies. "Seth has a creative vision and a brilliant strategy to bring this group of researchers together around research topics that bear on some of the most important societal challenges."
Sanders joined Duke in 2008 and is a professor in the Department of Economics and the Sanford School of Public Policy. In his previous position at the University of Maryland, he played a vital role in the success of the Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC), which has similar goals as DuPRI.
Over the past few years, Sanders has been involved in four broad research programs: the economic and health consequences of migration and immigration; economic shocks and the effects on workers and families; gay and lesbian families and their performance in the U.S. economy; gender and racial wage differences among the highly educated.
"Our challenge is to leverage the individual contributions of our scholars into a collective enterprise that will yield science that is new, innovative and extends our knowledge in ways that scholars working independently cannot," said Sanders, who praised Vaupel's leadership in establishing a direction for DuPRI
SSRI is an interdisciplinary program whose core mission is to catalyze and produce pioneering social science research and methods across the social and behavioral sciences.
For more information, visit <http://www.dupri.duke.edu>.