African-American Studies Program
The African American Studies and Research Program is a multidisciplinary unit at the University of Kentucky that seeks to promote the interest and knowledge of the African diaspora experience through quality teaching, research, and service.

Appalachian Center
The Center is a nationally-recognized area studies program. Faculty associates include Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack (who wrote the book, Appalachia: A Regional Geography), Graham Rowles and John Watkins (both of whom have conducted extensive research on the elderly in the region), and Gary Shannon.

Behavioral Science
This program, which is affiliated with the Medical Center, includes many social scientists, most of whom conduct health-related research. Faculty involvement includes Graham Rowles and Gary Shannon.

Center for Health Services Research
The Center is an internationally renowned Center of Excellence that informs health policy, influences health systems, and ultimately improves the health of individuals and populations. Center faculty and associates provide research, consultation and education in health systems to improve the health of individuals and populations in the Commonwealth and beyond. Gary Shannon is a Center associate.

Committee on Social Theory
This interdisciplinary program has played a large part in the intellectual trajectory of our program. It was co-founded and has been co-directed by John Paul Jones III and Wolfgang Natter. Wolfgang served as the long term director, and currently serves as the director of International Social Theory Consortium. Other active members in the program include Susan Roberts, Richard Schein, and Anna Secor. The program offers a graduate certificate, publishes a student journal, and has a research assistantship position, all of which have been popular with geography graduate students. The CST graduate students edit the journal disClosure.

Historic Preservation
Housed in the College of Architecture, Historic Preservation offers a masters program that is supported by faculty from several cognate disciplines including Geography. Karl Raitz, Richard Schein, and Alice Turkington are all on the HP faculty and serve on student committees.

Japan Studies
An impetus to the rise in Japan Studies at UK has been the nearby location of the largest Toyota plant in the country, at Georgetown, Kentucky. Both social scientific and humanistic scholars are involved in the program. Japan Studies is directed by P. P. Karan. Recently, the program hired its first faculty member in Japanese language and literature.

Kentucky Transportation Center
This research center has an annual budget of about $8-10 million, and employs over 100 full-time and part-time staff and students on over 150 ongoing projects at any one time. Besides conventional transportation engineering projects, the Center also does policy, economic, public involvement, and visualization research.  The Center offers competitive one-year $6000 education scholarships to students from multiple disciplines, including geography, that pursue the Center's customized 6-hour Transportation Management seminar taught by Dr. Len O'Connell of the Center. The Center often retains select geography graduate students as long-term RA's. Ted Grossardt, a Ph.D. graduate of Geography, is a research manager at the Center and maintains close research and instructional ties with the department.

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging
This interdisciplinary center focuses on both the social and medical aspects of aging. Graham Rowles has served as its Associate Director since his arrival at UK in 1985. In addition, John Watkins is an associate of the Center. In the past, some of our students have had research assistantships with the unit. More recently, Graham Rowles has become director of a new interdisciplinary Ph.D. in gerontology, one of the few such programs in the country.

Tracy Farmer Center for the Environment
Though the Farmer Center is relatively new it is currently seeking a permanent director and several Geography faculty could potentially become affiliated with Center research programs.

Women's Studies Program
This interdisciplinary program crosses the social sciences and humanities. In addition to offering an active program of events throughout the year, the program sponsors a graduate certificate that has been popular among a large number of our students. Susan Roberts and Anna Secor are program associates.