Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies Awards New Interdisciplinary Grants Totaling $1.05 Million

The Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative announced on February 1, 2006, the award of eight new grants totaling $1.05 million to multidisciplinary Stanford faculty teams. The grants are the first to be awarded from Stanford’s new Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies (PFIIS) created in 2005.

“The world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex interdisciplinary challenges. The collaborative proposals we have selected for this first round of funding offer great potential to help shed light on some of the most persistent and pressing political issues on the global agenda today—issues acutely important to our common future.” john hennessy, stanford president

The fund supports interdisciplinary research and teaching on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being. Priority was given to teams of faculty who did not typically work together, representing multiple fields, and choosing to address issues falling broadly within the three primary research areas of the Initiative. Projects were to be based on collaborative research or teaching, involving faculty from two or more disciplines, and, where possible, from two or more of the University’s seven schools.

“The International Initiative’s Executive Committee was encouraged to receive more than 35 proposals of an impressive caliber and, after careful review, to award the first project and planning grants, totaling $1.05 million, to eight deserving faculty teams.” Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and chair of the Executive Committee“The International Initiative’s Executive Committee was encouraged to receive more than 35 proposals of an impressive caliber and, after careful review, to award the first project and planning grants, totaling $1.05 million, to eight deserving faculty teams,” stated Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and chair of the Executive Committee.

The projects qualifying for first-round funding of approximately $1.025 million are the following:

• Governance Under Authoritarian Rule. Stephen Haber and Beatriz Magaloni, political science; Ian Morris, classics, history; and Jennifer Trimble, classics. Will examine the political economy of authoritarian systems and, by drawing on methods from history, archaeology, political science, and economics, determine why some authoritarian governments are able to transition to democracy, stable economic growth, and functioning political institutions, while others prove predatory and unstable.
• Addressing Institutional and Interest Conflicts: Project Governance Structures for Global Infrastructure Development. Raymond Levitt, civil and environmental engineering, and Doug McAdam and Richard Scott, sociology. Will examine the challenges of creating effective and efficient public/ private institutions for the provision of low-cost, distributed, and durable infrastructure services to underserved populations in emerging economies, drawing on engineering cost management, organizational and institutional theory, political science, political sociology, and transaction cost analysis.
• Combating HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa: The Treatment Revolution and Its Impact on Health, Well-Being, and Governance. David Katzenstein, infectious diseases, and Jeremy Weinstein, political science. Based on the 2005 commitment by the Group of 8 donors to put 10 million people infected with HIV/AIDS on treatment within five years, will research the impact of this treatment revolution on health, wellbeing, and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on South Africa and Zimbabwe. Seeks to develop a systematic protocol for the collection and analysis of biomedical and social science data.
• Evaluating Institutional Responses to Market Liberalization: Why Latin America Was Left Behind. Judith Goldstein, political science; Avner Greif, economics; Stephen Haber, political science; Herb Klein, history; Grant Miller, medicine; and Barry Weingast, political science. Will research the dynamic interaction between inequality and Latin American institutions, formal and informal, in explaining the poor performance of Latin American countries over the past two decades, seeking in particular to explain why liberal institutional reforms, such as trade liberalization, have failed to yield expected economic benefits.
• Feeding the World in the 21st Century: Exploring the Connections Between Food Production, Health, Environmental Resources, and International Security. Rosamond Naylor, FSI/economics; Stephen Stedman, FSI/political science; Peter Vitousek, biological sciences; and Gary Schoolnik, medicine, microbiology and immunology. Launches new research and teaching program at Stanford on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), with an initial priority on two research areas: 1) Food Security, Health, and International Security; 2) Globalization, Agricultural Trade, and the Environment. Seeks to address the problems of global food insecurity and hunger, the “silent killer” of our time, affecting more than 1 billion people globally. Research and teaching will focus on the interconnections between food security, agricultural production, infectious diseases, environmental degradation, and national and international security, with the aim of advancing human well-being by identifying linkages, policy interventions, and new forms of political cooperation.
• Political Economy of Cultural Diversity. James Fearon, political science, and Romain Wacziarg, Graduate School of Business. Will research the effect of cultural diversity on economic and political performance, examining specifically the role of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity on economic growth, the free flow of trade and capital across borders, governance, development of democratic institutions, and political stability. Will develop novel measures of ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences within countries and use these to assess their causal impact on important political and economic outcomes.

Two planning grants were also awarded, as follows:

• Global Health by Design. Geoffrey Gurtner, plastic and reconstructive surgery; David Kelley, mechanical engineering; Thomas Krummel, surgery; Julie Parsonnet, medicine, health research and policy; and Paul Yock, medicine, bioengineering. Will design a project to examine how new technology can be used to develop effective, affordable, and sustainable methods and devices to prevent disease in the world’s poorest countries.
• Ecological Sanitation in Rural Haiti: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sanitation and Soil Fertility. Ralph Greco, surgery, and Rodolfo Dirzo, biological sciences. Will develop a plan to test the efficacy of ecological sanitation in decreasing disease and enhancing soil fertility in rural Haiti.

“It is abundantly clear that addressing some of the most significant problems on the global agenda will require imaginative thinking, bold approaches, and interdisciplinary collaboration,” Blacker said. The projects will produce new field research and protocols, conferences, research papers, books, symposia, and courses. Additional annual project awards totaling roughly $1 million each will be made in the fall of 2006 and in 2007.