Sarah Burgard will serve a second term as Director of the Population Studies Center (PSC).

Under her leadership, PSC has continued to thrive as one of the nation’s leading population centers and a center for training the standard-bearers of demography, through its premier training program for pre- and post-doctoral students as well as resources provided openly to population scientists worldwide.

Sarah Burgard currently serves as both the Vice President of the Population Association of America (PAA) — one of the world’s largest professional demographic associations– and as President of the Association of Population Centers, comprising universities and research centers advancing population research and training.

Dr. Burgard is a professor of Sociology, and by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is also a Research Professor in the Population Studies Center and Research Affiliate in the Survey Research Center, both at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Burgard conducts research on the social stratification of aging and health with population-based survey data, and has published extensively on the social factors underlying health disparities by socioeconomic status, gender, and race/ethnicity across the life course. 

She is the current Principal Investigator of the NIA and NICHD-funded graduate and postdoctoral training program hosted at PSC, and of its NICHD-funded population center infrastructure grant. Burgard is also one of the PIs of an NIA-funded research network that supports the careers of new investigators in the social determinants of healthy aging.

Burgard has an exemplary record of mentorship and public service and has been especially dedicated to strengthening PSC’s training programs and supporting emerging scholars. She has previously served as Sociology’s Director of Graduate Studies, ISR’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Implementation Lead, and as a member of PAA’s Board of Directors. In 2019, Burgard was awarded the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science Mentoring Award and the John Dewey Award for long term commitment to undergraduate education from U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and Arts. 

In 2003, as a graduate student, Burgard earned the Dorothy S. Thomas Award, the award given by the PAA that is the highest recognition accorded to a student paper in demography. The award itself is named for Dorothy Thomas (1899-1977), a pioneering sociologist, one-time president of PAA, and lasting inspiration to Burgard and her colleagues.

The Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research is an interdisciplinary community of scholars in population research and training, and is recognized as one of the leading population centers in the world.