New Global Collaborative Networks projects chosen

Princeton University's Council for International Teaching and Research has selected faculty proposals to create global networks to allow scholars to focus on interdisciplinary research in the humanities and experimental methods in political economy.

The initiatives will be funded by grants totaling more than $430,000 from the Princeton Global Collaborative Networks Fund, which facilitates international scholarly networks that enable Princeton to engage with centers of learning worldwide.

The new projects, which will begin in fall 2013, and their coordinating faculty members at Princeton are:

Empirical Political Economy Research Network: Encouraging Collaboration and Establishing Best Practices in an Emerging Field (Leonard Wantchekon, politics). This initiative will bring together scholars from Princeton, Mexico, Brazil and the West African nation of Benin to develop a comprehensive program on the role of experimental and quasi-experimental methods in studying governance and social policy. Students and faculty members will participate in a series of conferences, workshops and training designed to identify promising approaches and equip a new generation of practitioners with the methodological tools necessary for rigorous experimental research. Participants will come from Princeton, the University of São Paulo, the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics in Mexico, and the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy in Benin. This project is supported by Sovereign Bank.

International Network for Comparative Humanities
(Maria DiBattista, English and comparative literature). Scholars from Princeton and across Europe will create an international consortium to provide faculty and graduate students with a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment in which to pursue research in the humanities. The effort will initially draw Princeton faculty and students from English and comparative literature, seeking to build strong international ties for departments rich in faculty and students whose work is international and interdisciplinary. For the three-year period of the grant, the network will focus on the theme of "emotions," to be explored in a different context each year. The initiative will establish ties between Princeton and European research centers including the Centro de Estudos Comparatistas in Lisbon, Portugal, and the University College London Centre for Intercultural Studies, and formalize links between Princeton and Synapsis: The European School for Comparative Studies. 

More information about the new grants is available on the Council for International Teaching and Research website.