Centers and Institutes

The African Feminist Initiative (AFI) is a global and transnational platform where feminist scholars and activists engage in interdisciplinary collaborative knowledge production about Africa and its diaspora.

The primary objective of the ARC is to stimulate and sustain the development of relevant and appropriate initiatives at Penn State that foster diversity and an increased understanding and appreciation of the history, life, and culture of African diasporic peoples.

The mission of CALPER is to strengthen and promote language learning at the advanced levels of proficiency.

Founded in 2006, the Center for American Literary advances the study, teaching, and reading of American literature, making Penn State an internationally recognized source of pioneering work in American literary and cultural studies.

The Center for Black Digital Research, also known as #DigBlk, engages public and scholarly audiences in collaborative initiatives that bring the buried histories of early Black organizing to digital life. #DigBlk is committed to building future generations of Black scholars.

The Center for Global Studies is a cross-disciplinary center for the creative and innovative study of the complex facets of globalization. We facilitate faculty and student research, promote globally relevant education, and introduce new outreach programs.

The Center for Global Workers’ Rights, established in 2012, focuses on vulnerable workers in precarious sectors of the global economy. It publishes research reports, funds student projects, organizes scholar-practitioner exchanges, and co-hosts the Global Labour Journal.

CHED promotes the transdisciplinary study of the human condition. CHED supports and promotes team-based, explicitly interdisciplinary basic research on the evolution of humans and human diversity, and educational research and outreach related to this research.

Supports research on the role information plays in the production of social meaning and value across the human sciences, from the orality-literacy transition to the new digital media. The Center builds an intellectual community of fellows.

Center for International Human Resource Studies (CIHRS) houses research and events that form a central hub for the international human resources management scholarly community, enabling the sharing of ideas to advance knowledge and practice in the field.

The Center for Language Acquisition is a research unit that focuses on conducting and supporting Applied Linguistics research on the teaching, learning, and assessment of foreign and second languages.

The Center for Language Science is an interdisciplinary group of linguists, psycholinguists, applied linguists, speech-language pathologists, speech scientists, and cognitive neuroscientists who share an interest in language acquisition and bilingualism.

Social Data Analytics integrates social, scientific, computational, informational, statistical, and visual analytic approaches to analyze large or complex data that arise from human interaction. supports research and education campus wide in Social Data Analytics.

The Child Study Center supports six interdisciplinary research initiatives, fifty-seven major externally-funded research projects, two graduate training programs, and a professional training institute, creating a unique and vibrant interdisciplinary community committed to improving children’s lives.

The Criminal Justice Research Center bridges the gap between research and criminal justice practice by fostering a rigorous research agenda and transferring knowledge directly to criminal justice practitioners and policymakers.

EPPIC is a research and academic support center that focuses on advanced English for academic and professional purposes. It provides instruction on spoken and written English to multilingual students and scholars via workshops, consultations and customized programming.

The Richards Center advances research on the history of slavery, race, and democracy in the United States. It hosts the premiere journal in Civil War Era studies, organizes events, and provides support for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and postdoctoral fellows.

Sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies and the College of the Liberal Arts, the Global Asias Initiative (GAI) encompasses several interrelated projects that bring into relation, but not necessarily into alignment, work in Asian studies, Asian American studies, and Asian Diaspora studies.

The Humanities Institute is dedicated to supporting the generation and promotion of ideas in all aspects of the humanities and related disciplines. It engages Penn State faculty, other academics, and the public in ongoing discussion of the most pressing questions of our time.

The Rock Ethics Institute promotes engaged ethics research and leadership by supporting interdisciplinary collaborations, promoting ethical literacy and leadership at Penn State, and engaging community partners and the public in collaborative ways.

The McCourtney Institute for Democracy is an interdisciplinary research center that seeks to understand, preserve, and defend democracy. We strive to help people in the Penn State community and beyond become better democratic citizens through research, education, and outreach.

World in Conversation’s mission is to train small-group facilitators who can enable people on both sides of a border (whatever that border is) to solve problems together. In our view, this is “true” public diplomacy–and instrumental for cross-border peace and security.