The Laboratory of Demographic and Social Analyses (LDSA) was established in 1998. It serves research and educational needs of the disciplines of Demography, Sociology and of Social Research Methodology, with special emphasis on the analysis of demographic and social data in the framework of spatial planning and programming.

LDSA specializes in demographic projections-previsions as well as in the development of methods and techniques of population analysis with the aim of determining the existing conditions along with identifying at overlapping spatial levels of development hindering problems. The Laboratory also hosts the seat of the International Scientific Association DemoBalk (www.demobalk.org) the objective of which is the search of recent demographic and socio-economic developments and their impact on the Balkan countries (organization of conferences, publications, scientific meetings).

LDSA has acquired the necessary infrastructure and has created the databases that enable further research development. More specifically, it has gathered data on modern demographic developments in SE Europe (with special emphasis on the Balkan countries) and on EU member countries. At the same time, it has started to create a demographic database of Greece on the lowest possible spatial scale.

Within the last decade, LDSA, given the accumulated experience of its members and collaborators, has been oriented to: applied demographic analyses, analysis of the spatial dimension of demographic and social phenomena, population projections, the study of economic crisis impact on population growth, development of a database analysis and management software, and automated cartography of results. The laboratory members (and collaborators) also have considerable experience of carrying out field research using questionnaires as well as of analysing collected data. Considerable specialization has been acquired in the development of user friendly database management tools, applied statistical tools and ddynamic thematic mapping applications. All these tools have educational, research and operational dimensions and are simultaneously exploited by both the students of the Department of Planning and Regional Development of University of Thessaly who work on their graduate or post-graduate thesis in LDSA and by PhD candidates and post-doc students.

Within the framework of the Laboratory, Master dissertations as well as Ph.D. theses have been and are being elaborated. Furthermore, every year it organizes seminars, lectures and meetings in its fields of interest, with the collaboration of significant scholars and researchers from Greece and abroad..

The LDSA's research focuses on applied demographic analysis and population projections, and, especially in the analysis of demographic developments in Greece and in the Balkans, the spatial dimensions of population change in Greece (see internal mobility), the analysis of migration and refugee flows as well the impact of economic crisis on demographic components in Greece and in other southern European countries..

See also: 'e-demography' (data, metadata and analysis for Greece)