Three teams of Princeton scholars have been selected by the University's Council for International Teaching and Research to receive research network grants for new studies of migrant children, the global economic crisis and the international language of photography.
Funded through the Princeton Global Collaborative Research Fund, which facilitates international scholarly networks that enable Princeton to engage with centers of learning worldwide, these research networks will begin in fall 2010. The grants total $532,500 over a three-year period.
The Princeton Global Collaborative Research Fund allocates grants to sustain collaborative initiatives of significant global scholarship and to promote career development of scholars at all stages with the purpose of enhancing Princeton scholars' participation in global research. The fund is part of a series of international initiatives outlined by President Shirley M. Tilghman and Provost Christopher Eisgruber in fall 2007. Last year the fund's first grants were awarded to six research networks that will continue through 2012.
The council, which engages in strategic planning for Princeton's international initiatives, evaluated nine final submissions and awarded grants to networks coordinated by seven faculty members representing the departments of sociology, politics, English, Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. These selected network projects and their coordinating faculty members are:
- Migrant Youth and Children of Migrants in a Globalized World (Marta Tienda and Sara McLanahan, sociology and Wilson School; and Alicia Adsera, Wilson School). In response to global economic and political integration, international migration has been rising. Today, between 9 and 10 percent of the population living in developed regions is foreign-born, compared to 1.3 percent in developing regions. Women and children represent a large share of international migrants. This project seeks to study children's involvement in international migration and its consequences for their psychosocial, physical and economic well-being. The group will convene interdisciplinary teams of researchers from research hubs in the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia and at the Wilson School to foster crossnational comparative research about the well-being of children and youth with migration backgrounds.
- Economic Crisis, Public Policy and Inequality (Larry Bartels, politics and Wilson School; and Jonas Pontusson, politics). The current global economic downturn has analysts reaching back to the Great Depression for historical analogies, giving rise to a variety of pressing scientific and policy questions about how the world's democracies are responding to financial meltdowns, deep recessions and prolonged high unemployment. This network will recruit an international team of scholars to study policy responses to the economic crisis in a variety of democratic political systems. In addition to Princeton, the primary nodes of the network will be the University of Oxford, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in France and the Max-Planck Institute in Germany. The team hopes to account for similarities and differences in the policies adopted in different countries and to trace the economic and political effects of those policies.
- The Itinerate Languages of Photography: Images, Media and Archives in an International Context (Eduardo Cadava, English; and Gabriela Nouzeilles, Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures). Photographs communicate across historical periods, national borders and media outlets. This project will study these "itinerate languages" of modern photography and how they operate in international and global networks of collaboration and exchange. Scholars will address questions relating to the unprecedented speed of this language's spread, as well as examine the consequences of artificial memory and modern forms of archiving. Tracing the movement of photographs within and between different national photographic traditions -- especially within the Latin American and Hispanic context -- the research group hopes to understand not only the shifting contours of this phenomenon, but also the role and place of images within it.
