FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
CISAC Conference Room
REAP Director Scott Rozelle gave a talk to investment group Dodge and Cox Investments entitled "China’s Shifting Economy, the Plight of Migrant Workers and Shaping the Hope for China’s Recovery/Future Development: China’s Education Challenge."
Wan Gang, China's Minister of Science and Technology, and Bai Chunli, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, presented REAP Director Scott Rozelle with the 2009 Award for Collaboration in Science and Technology in Beijing, China.
This 2009-10 interdisciplinary research workshop examines the trajectory of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa by means of regional and international comparisons. Africa is the third, and most recent, region to establish a regional human rights court, the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights (ACPHR). At this critical juncture in African human rights, there is an urgent need for deeper understandings and applications of the law of human rights.
This workshop will be of interest and benefit to faculty and graduate students conducting research in the following areas: African studies; human rights; law; anthropology; cultural studies; history; political science and international relations; philosophy; and sociology.
The workshop, coordinated by Helen Stacy (Law School, FSI), will meet once this quarter and between three and four times during the Winter and Spring quarters of the 2009-2010 academic year.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
A REAP-sponsored workshop lead by REAP affiliate Paul Gewwe (University of Minnesota) designed to target foundation and non-profit managers and executives, researchers and government officials.
Introduction and objectives
Numerous programs are implemented by governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are intended to change individuals’ economic or social outcomes. Common examples of this include agricultural extension services, public health programs and education programs. An important (and admittedly difficult to answer) question is: How effective are these programs in changing economic or social outcomes? Comparing the relative effectiveness of different programs, as well as comparing these programs’ benefits to their costs is crucial for governments to understand.
Objectives
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research
No.11 Jia Datun Road
Chaoyang District
Beijing, China
A REAP-sponsored workshop designed to target foundation and non-profit managers and executives, researchers and government officials.
Objectives
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research
No.11 Jia Datun Road
Chaoyang District
Beijing, China
This paper presents data from six of the first countries incorporated into the Agricultural Lives of the Poor project: Ghana, Guatemala, India, Malawi, Uganda, and Vietnam. Datasets were selected based on availability and depth of detail on consumption expenditures, sources of income, and agricultural practices. Each of these survey components is necessary in order for ALP to focus on net consumption/production at the household level, and to understand expenditure and consumption behavior. Net consumption and production data of individual crops and food groups is further disaggregated by subgroups formed on characteristics that include economic status, household attributes, livelihood strategies, calories available, landholding, tenure types, and agricultural input use.
The health sector's successes in Vietnam have been described as "legendary" by international donors, but there is always the other side of the story. One can question the objectivity of reports from the government of Vietnam, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. One can wonder in what areas the health sector has failed, who has paid for a "success story" and at what cost, and how much information is well documented and has been made public. Are there "stylized facts" regarding those aspects of health that have been successfully reformed compared with those where reform has lagged? Given these concerns, how can the research community contribute to improving health policy in Vietnam?
Dr. Truong will share his thought on recent socioeconomic development in Vietnam, discuss key health policy issues, and reflect upon his experiences including a research project in which the University of Queensland collaborated with Ministry of Health of Vietnam. Additional evidence will be drawn from a study of the cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce tobacco use in Vietnam.
Khoa Truong was a visiting faculty member at the Hanoi School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Health Strategy and Policy Institute in 2008-2009. Prior to that he spent six years as a doctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug control policies; the impacts of built environments on health; international health issues; and economic development.
He received his doctorate and master of philosophy in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and earned a master's degree in development economics from Williams College. A native of Vietnam, he began his career working with NGOs in bilateral and multilateral development projects in Southeast Asia. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and wrote “most outstanding paper” submitted at an AcademyHealth's Annual Research Meeting (acknowledged as the premier forum for sharing the results of scholarship on health services).
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation, testified Thursday, November 19, before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment on the subject of "Reassessing the Evolving al-Qa'ida Threat to the Homeland." Crenshaw, who recently launched a three-year effort to build a global database of terrorist 'family trees,' was joined by three terrorism experts at the hearing in Washington, D.C.
CDDRL faculty members Francisco Ramirez, John Meyer, and Christine Min Wotipka have been awarded a major grant from the Spencer Foundation for their research on "Globalization, Citizenship, and Education: A Cross-National Study of Curricula, 1995-2005."
Since World War II, cultural, political, and economic globalization have undercut an earlier educational model that only emphasizes the nation state and national citizenship. Increasingly, the student is to be prepared to function as a responsible rights-bearing human person in a global society, relating to people regardless of national citizenship status. Increasingly, this global society is seen as legitimately very diverse and multicultural in character. Diversity within national society is also recognized as legitimate and central. At the individual level students are to learn to express and to respect all sorts of unique values and cultural materials.
This project raises questions surrounding two relevant core changes:
The study proposes to code and analyze social science textbooks from about seventy countries around the world through the last half-century. These studies will trace worldwide, regional, and national trends in textbook emphases. These studies will examine national and transnational factors that influence the likelihood of the rise and spread of cosmopolitan, multicultural, and individual empowerment frames. These studies will also examine ways in which social studies curricula seek to resolve tensions between national unity and both supra-national and sub-national legitimated diversity.