Global Collaborative Networks projects focus on health and social-environmental systems

Princeton University's Council for International Teaching and Research has selected two faculty proposals to receive grants totaling more than $350,000 from the Princeton Global Collaborative Networks Fund, which facilitates international scholarly networks that enable Princeton to engage with centers of learning worldwide.

The proposals outline plans to create global networks that focus on connecting field research on tropical diseases with analytical expertise and increasing the understanding of social-environmental systems.

The new projects, which will begin in fall 2014, and their coordinating faculty members at Princeton are:

Princeton Global Network on Infectious Disease Epidemiology: A global collaborative network bridging tropical field epidemiology with advanced epidemiological and policy analysis (Bryan Grenfell, ecology and evolutionary biology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs). This initiative will draw together Princeton's advanced epidemiological and policy analysis with the tropical field epidemiology of partners in Vietnam and India. The collaboration is designed to cover the essential links that translate health data to health policy. The network will conduct global health research and teaching exchanges and will facilitate the transfer of knowledge between Southeast and South Asia. Over the long term, organizers hope the network will expand to include partners working on similar topics around the world, with Princeton serving as a hub for interdisciplinary infectious disease research. Participants will come from Princeton, the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam and the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington, D.C., and New Delhi. This grant is supported by Santander Bank.

A Global Collaborative Network for Analyzing Social-Environmental Systems (Simon Levin, ecology and evolutionary biology). Scholars from Princeton, Italy, Norway and Sweden will create an international consortium to foster the analysis of social-environmental systems — those that include interaction between humans and the Earth. Social-environmental issues range in scale from the resource limitations of small-scale fisheries to the global problem of climate change. The study of social-environmental systems synthesizes knowledge and skills from economics, ecology, sociology, anthropology and political science, and the network is designed to develop the understanding of the field in ways no single institution can do alone. The network presents an opportunity to place Princeton at the center of such research internationally. Participants will come from Princeton, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis in Oslo, and the Venice International Center for Climate Studies. This grant is supported in part by Santander Bank.