Centers and Institutes

Centers and Institutes
Centers and Institutes

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African Feminist Initiative

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Africana Research Center

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.

Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research

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

Center for American Literary Studies

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of English

Center for Black Digital Research

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of History
  • Department of English
  • Department of African American Studies

Center for Global Studies

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • School of Labor and Employment Relations

Center for Global Workers Rights

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.

Center for Human Evolution and Diversity

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.

Center for Humanities and Information

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

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • School of Labor and Employment Relations

Center for Language Acquisition

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.

Center for Language Science

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
  • Department of Psychology
  • Linguistics Program
  • Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures
  • Department of French and Francophone Studies

Center for Social Data Analytics

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Political Science

Child Study Center

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Psychology

Criminal Justice Research Center

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • School of Public Policy
  • Department of Sociology and Criminology

English for Professional Purposes Intercultural Center

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Applied Linguistics

George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of History

Global Asias Initiative

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Asian Studies

Humanities Institute

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.

Rock Ethics Institute

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Philosophy

The McCourtney Institute for Democracy

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of English
  • Department of Communication Arts and Sciences
  • Department of Political Science

World in Conversation

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.
Affiliated Departments, Schools, and Programs:
  • Department of Sociology and Criminology
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