David L. Featherman

Emeritus Professor David L. Featherman was founding director of the Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society (CARSS), a novel advanced study center created in 2003 at the University of Michigan to pursue team-led analyses of social issues and intellectual dilemmas on a world scale. He held simultaneous appointments as Professor of Sociology and Psychology in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and as Research Professor in the Population Studies Center of the Institute for Social Research (ISR). Between 1995 and 2005 he served as director of ISR. An alumnus of Michigan (1969 Ph.D. in Social Psychology; Masters in Sociology), Featherman was President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in New York City before returning to Ann Arbor in 1995. The SSRC was founded in 1923 by private philanthropy to function as a national academy of social science. He previously held the John Bascom Professorship in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he served on its faculty and in various administrative positions from 1970 to 1989. His research has spanned the multi-disciplinary fields of demography, social psychology, human development, and gerontology.