FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.
The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.
Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.
History Department
450 Serra Mall, Building 200
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2024
Wesley Chaney is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Stanford University. His current project centers on law and socioeconomic change in northwest China during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911); he is currently living in Beijing for one year while conducting research on a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant. The main sources of his work include legal cases and contracts, though he also uses a variety of non-legal sources such as genealogies, gazetteers, and fiction.
121 Cummings Art Building
Stanford, California 94305-2018
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Chunping Han is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, she was an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Her research interests include perceptions of inequality, subjective well-being, and health in the context of immense social changes. During her time at Shorenstein APARC, she will study how ordinary people define, describe, and explain the sources of life satisfaction, happiness, and psychological distress in transitional China based on in-depth interviews.
Han participated in two national surveys on popular attitudes toward inequality and distributional issues in China. She has also published journal articles and a book chapter on distributive injustice feelings, redistribution attitudes, and livelihood satisfaction in contemporary China.
Han earned her PhD in sociology from Harvard University and her MA in education from Stanford University. She also received an MA from Beijing Foreign Studies University and a BA from Fudan University, China.
Barry Weingast will present findings from a paper he co-authored with Douglass C. North from Washington University and Gary W. Cox from Stanford University. "The Violence Trap: A Political-Economic Approach to the Problems of Development" examines the problems of development – with a billion people mired in poverty and governments resistant to economic reform – economists and political scientists have proposed a wide range of development or poverty traps: self-reinforcing mechanisms that prevent developing countries from embarking on the path of steady development.
Please see attached paper.
Speaker Bio:
Barry R. Weingast is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; he served as chair of that department from 1996 to 2001. Weingast is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has written extensively on problems of political economy of development, federalism, legal institutions and the rule of law, and democracy. He is co-author of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (with Douglass North and John Wallis, 2009, Cambridge University Press); editor (with Donald Wittman) The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2006); and author (with Douglass North) of "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England" Journal of Economic History (1989). He has won numerous awards, including the William Riker Prize for scholarly achievement in political science; the James L. Barr Memorial Prize in Public Economics; the Distinguished Scholar Award in Public Policy, Martin School of Public Policy, University of Kentucky, and the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award (with Kenneth Schultz: the American Political Science Association’s prize for the best paper at the annual meetings).
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room
Abstract: Dr. Wang will be discussing some of the formal governmental and non-governmental collaborative mechanisms between Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and other countries (including the US) on survaillance and reporting for flu. He will also discuss lessons learned from SARS, including the development of specific policies, protocols, or procedures, and new technologies deployed for public health preparedness.
C. Jason Wang, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford University. He received his B.S. from MIT, M.D. from Harvard, and Ph.D. in policy analysis from RAND. After completing his pediatric residency training at UCSF, he worked in Greater China with McKinsey and Company, during which time he performed multiple studies in the Asian healthcare market. In 2000, he was recruited to serve as the project manager for the Taskforce on Reforming Taiwan's National Health Insurance System. His fellowship training in health services research included the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Research Service Award Fellowship at UCLA. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2011, he was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health (2006-2010) and Associate Professor (2010-2011) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center.
Among his accomplishments, he was selected as the student speaker for Harvard Medical School Commencement (1996). He received the Overseas Chinese Outstanding Achievement Medal (1996), the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholars Career Development Award (2007), the CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award for Transformative Innovation in Healthcare Research (2010), and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2011). He was recently named a “Viewpoints” editor and a regular contributor for theJournal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He served as an external reviewer for the 2011 IOM Report “Child and Adolescent Health and Health Care Quality: Measuring What Matters” and as a reviewer for AHRQ study sections.
Dr. Wang has written two bestselling Chinese books published in Taiwan and co-authored an English book “Analysis of Healthcare Interventions that Change Patient Trajectories”. His essay, "Time is Ripe for Increased U.S.-China Cooperation in Health," was selected as the first-place American essay in the 2003 A. Doak Barnett Memorial Essay Contest sponsored by the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
Currently he is the principal investigator on a number of quality improvement and quality assessment projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (USA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Andrew T. Huang Medical Education Promotion Fund (Taiwan).
Dr. Wang’s research interests include: 1) developing tools for assessing and improving the quality of healthcare; 2) facilitating the use of innovative consumer technology in improving quality of care and health outcomes; 3) studying competency-based medical education curriculum, and 4) improving health systems performance.
CISAC Conference Room
Encina Commons Room 180,
615 Crothers Way,
Stanford, CA 94305-6006
C. Jason Wang, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy and director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford University. He received his B.S. from MIT, M.D. from Harvard, and Ph.D. in policy analysis from RAND. After completing his pediatric residency training at UCSF, he worked in Greater China with McKinsey and Company, during which time he performed multiple studies in the Asian healthcare market. In 2000, he was recruited to serve as the project manager for the Taskforce on Reforming Taiwan's National Health Insurance System. His fellowship training in health services research included the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Research Service Award Fellowship at UCLA. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2011, he was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health (2006-2010) and Associate Professor (2010-2011) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center.
Among his accomplishments, he was selected as the student speaker for Harvard Medical School Commencement (1996). He received the Overseas Chinese Outstanding Achievement Medal (1996), the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholars Career Development Award (2007), the CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award for Transformative Innovation in Healthcare Research (2010), and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2011). He was recently named a “Viewpoints” editor and a regular contributor for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He served as an external reviewer for the 2011 IOM Report “Child and Adolescent Health and Health Care Quality: Measuring What Matters” and as a reviewer for AHRQ study sections.
Dr. Wang has written two bestselling Chinese books published in Taiwan and co-authored an English book “Analysis of Healthcare Interventions that Change Patient Trajectories”. His essay, "Time is Ripe for Increased U.S.-China Cooperation in Health," was selected as the first-place American essay in the 2003 A. Doak Barnett Memorial Essay Contest sponsored by the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
Currently he is the principal investigator on a number of quality improvement and quality assessment projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (USA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Andrew T. Huang Medical Education Promotion Fund (Taiwan).
Dr. Wang’s research interests include: 1) developing tools for assessing and improving the quality of healthcare; 2) facilitating the use of innovative consumer technology in improving quality of care and health outcomes; 3) studying competency-based medical education curriculum, and 4) improving health systems performance.
About the Speaker: Omar Dajani is one of the nation's foremost experts on the legal aspects of the conflict in the Middle East. His scholarly work explores the links between international law, legal and political history, and contract and negotiation theory. He also has considerable experience advising governments and development organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere. Professor Dajani joined the McGeorge School of Law in 2004. Previously, he was based in the Palestinian Territories, where he served first as legal advisor to the Palestinian team in peace talks with Israel and, subsequently, as an advisor to United Nations Special Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. Prior to working in the Middle East, he clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson on the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit and was a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley & Austin. He received his Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School in 1997 and a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies, and Middle Eastern and Asian History from Northwestern University.
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C126
Stanford, CA 94305
Megan Gorman became FSI's deputy director in October 2022. Megan joined FSI in September 2017 as the associate director for operations and since March 2020 served as FSI's associate director for administration and finance. She joined Stanford in 2005 and has served in a variety of capacities, including as the associate director for administration and finance at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), a financial management analyst in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) Dean's Office, the associate director of the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), and, for one year, the acting co-executive director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies (now Stanford Global Studies). She is a recipient of the H&S Dean's Award of Merit for her outstanding performance and dedication to CLAS.
Before Stanford, Megan served both as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador and a Volunteer in Service to America in three locations in Alaska, focusing on sustainable development projects in partnership with farmers and the Salvadoran Ministry of Agriculture and tribal governments, respectively, and taught English at a maritime university in China.
She holds an undergraduate degree in biology and a master's degree in international relations. Megan has advanced training in conflict management and volunteers in and has served as the co-chair of the City of Palo Alto’s Mediation Program.
