In recent years, Rostock has developed into one of Germany's leading and internationally recognised centres of demographic research. The ‘Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research’, demographic research specialisations at the University of Rostock and cooperation projects between the two institutions have made a decisive contribution to this. One example of this is the ‘Rostock Research Network for Historical Demography’, in which Prof Dr Stefan Kroll is involved from the Institute for Media Research. The network analyses demographic change from a broad historical-demographic perspective. The first step was to comprehensively analyse the demographic structures and processes of change in Mecklenburg society in the 19th century - thus contributing to research into the social structure of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern from a historical perspective.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is one of the most ageing regions in Germany - it is therefore often described as a laboratory in which the problems associated with an ageing population will occur earlier and more strongly than in other federal states. In the long term, additional data sets from other federal states and further subject areas of historical demography are to be analysed, possibly in follow-up projects. In this context, a historical-demographic project funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation focussed on the ‘soul register’ of the West Pomeranian trading and university town of Greifswald from 1717.