The 2014 recipients of the Albert O. Hirschman Prize, the SSRC’s highest award, have been announced:
the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT and the two
scholars who codirect it and have crucially contributed to its founding
and functioning, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The prize will be
presented at a lecture to be held in the fall.
The Abe Fellowship Program selected twelve US- and Japan-based researchers to receive Abe Fellowships for interdisciplinary projects on policy-relevant and contemporary issues with a comparative or transnational perspective. Four Abe Fellowships for Journalists were awarded, supporting international reporting on topics of pressing concern to the United States and Japan.
Measure of America launched NYC Data to Go,
a project to create an interactive visualization tool that will map
human need and well-being across the New York metro area. Consolidating
federal, state, and local data in a single curated source, the mobile
web app will transform isolated statistics into a holistic picture of
life in New York City, borough by borough and neighborhood by
neighborhood.
Measure of America codirector Kristen Lewis discussed the program's American Human Development Index, an alternative measure to GDP, with David Brancaccio on public radio's Marketplace and with the Des Moines Register.
The Forum on Health, Environment and Development (FORHEAD)
released a report that aims to inform the development of a more
integrated and problem-oriented research agenda to improve the food
chain in China, from production to consumption. Food Safety in China: A Mapping of Problems, Governance and Research was drafted by China Environment and Health Initiative program director Jennifer Holdaway and former program officer Lewis Husain [PDF available].
The Drugs, Security and Democracy Program published the second in a series of DSD Working Papers on Research Security: Kimberly Theidon’s “‘How Was Your Trip?’ Self-Care for Researchers Working and Writing on Violence” [PDF].
The Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum’s DRC Affinity Group
released a new paper that provides historical background on one of the
oldest armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the
FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda), and offers policy
proposals that could help to defuse this key source of regional tension:
“FDLR: Past, Present, and Policies” [PDF available].
Laying groundwork for the new Measuring College Learning Project, the Education Research Program held initial conversations with faculty in sociology and in economics on ways to define and measure learning outcomes for undergraduates in their disciplines.
The Inter-Asia Program cosponsored with New York University a two-day “Workshop on Infrastructures of Empire: Mediated Activism and (Counter) Revolutions,” featuring a public plenary panel as well as conversations with filmmakers, including Wazhmah Osman, a Transregional Research Postdoctoral (2013) and IDRF fellow (2009), who screened her documentary Postcards from Tora Bora, a personal perspective on three decades of war in Afghanistan.
Transregional Research Postdoctoral fellow Darryl Li (2013) is blogging for the Middle East Research and Information Project as a guest editor, with an eye to the historical frame linking the Middle East and South Asia.
The SSRC Forum Reverberations, a project of the program on Religion and the Public Sphere, was nominated for a Webby Award in the Religion and Spirituality category.