Kenneth Land
I received my Ph.D. in sociology and mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1969. After a year of postdoctoral study in mathematical statistics at Columbia University in New York City, I taught there and was a member of the staff of the Russell Sage Foundation for three years. I then was successively a member of the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the University of Texas at Austin before joining the Duke Sociology Department as Chairman in 1986. I served as Chair of Sociology from January 1986 to August 1997. My main research interests are contemporary social trends and quality-of-life measurement, social problems, demography, criminology, organizations, and mathematical and statistical models and methods for the study of social and demographic processes. I have done extensive research in each of these areas and have been elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (1978), the Sociological Research Association (1981), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992), the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (1997), and the American Society of Criminology (2004). I currently am the John Franklin Crowell Professor of Sociology Emeritus and no longer teach academic classes. I also am a Research Professor at Duke University Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) and Co-Director of the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU), part of the SSRI. As part of the BARU research team, I work on the biology and demography of aging and healthy aging research, including the health impacts of diseases such as Alzheimer’s. My other interests include pickleball, cycling, and music.
