2024-25 CISSR Faculty Research Fellows |
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UChicago’s Center for International Social Science Research (CISSR), under the Division of the Social Sciences, has announced the 2024-2025 cohort of Faculty Fellows. Since 2017 CISSR’s Faculty Fellows Program has supported international, transnational, and global research projects that are empirical in nature.
The program is designed to support social scientists from any discipline, working in any geographic region, regardless of methodological approach. The center provides up to $25,000 for faculty research projects at any stage of development.
This year’s fellows will address topics that include spatial heterogeneity in social science research and the legacy of slavery in eastern Nigeria. They will build on research covering the COVID-19 pandemic in China and relationships in pre-Roman Iberia. And they will explore the precise definition of "neighborhood" as well as the reception of asylum-seekers in Chicago. The topics are broad and impactful, with implications that stretch from academia to policy. Read the full announcement on our website and the news article here. |
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"Over the course of eight years, the faculty fellows program, which provides faculty with research funds targeted to specific projects and asks these faculty to discuss their research in collaborative settings with CISSR affiliates, has become our signature program. Our scientific community is defined by a collective desire to learn from the work our colleagues will be advancing in the coming year. Although varied in topic and scope, each of these projects shares a couple of characteristics. First, these faculty are tackling thorny questions that truly do not yet have answers. Second, their relevance transcends any single discipline or setting. This commitment to rigor and discovery defines the CISSR community."
Director Jenny Trinitapoli
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February 6
Katz Center for Mexican Studies
1pm, Zoom
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February 6
Chicago Center for Democracy
5 - 6:30pm, Kent Chemical Laboratory, Room 120
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The Association of Latinx Students for Social Justice
6:30 - 8:30 PM, The Forum @ the Keller Center
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Chicago Center on Democracy
12-1pm, Rosenwald Hall Room 015
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The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago
7pm, The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago
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February 8
The Martin Marty Center and the Seminary Co-Op
6pm, Swift Hall Room 200
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Center for Middle Eastern Studies
4:30pm, Saieh Hall 146
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February 9
The Lumen Christi Institute.
3-4:30pm, John Hope Franklin Room SSRB 224
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Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)
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February 12
The Pearson Institute
5:30-6:30 pm, Sky Suite @ the Keller Center
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February 15
11am-12pm, Virtual
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Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the France Chicago Center.
5pm, Wieboldt Hall, Room 207
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International House, the Center for East Asian Studies
5:30 - 7pm, International House
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Seminary Co-op
6pm, Seminary Co-op bookstore
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February 16
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society
4-6pm, Neubauer Collegium
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Around Town and Down the Road - updated |
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February 16
Newberry Library
3-5 PM, Virtual
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February 19
UIC - Institute for the Humanities
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4:00pm-5:30pm at John Hope Franklin room in SSRB
February 15: Ruiling Xue, PhD student in History. Tracing the 19th century North China materia medica market in astragalus stories
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Mondays 12:00 - 2:00pm in Pick 105
February 12: "Tocqueville and Beaumont in America and Algeria: Indigeneity, Slavery, and Settlement at the Boundaries of Mid-19th U.S. and French Imperial Expansion" Jonathan Wyrtzen, Yale University
February 19: "Pan-Asianism in Practice: Mahendra Pratap Singh and the Relational Sociology of Empire and Anti2 of 2 Imperialism" Martin Bayly London School of Economics
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The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, room 103 on alternate Tuesdays from 5:00 to 6:00pm CT
February 13: Zachary Richards, Philosophy/MAPH, The Intermediate Sex Organs
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Virtually on alternate Tuesdays 5:00 to 6:20pm
February 6: Bellamy Mitchell, CSGS-CSRPC Joint Dissertation Fellow, PhD Candidate, English and Social Thought Discussant: Jodi A. Byrd, Associate Professor in English, Cornell University
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Thursdays 4:00 - 5:30pm in Social Science Research Building 302
February 8: Kenan Behzat Sharpe Keyman Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University
February 15: They Fell Into the Hands of the Arabs’: Narrativising Violence Against the Moriscos in Northwest Algeria Kate Randazzo- UChicago History
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Mondays 12 - 1:20pm in Pick 506
February 19: “Origins of the 'Deep State' Trope” Winston Berg PhD candidate, Political Science
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Political Science Quantitative Methods Workshop
Wednesdays 12:30 - 1:50pm in Pick 506
February 7: Zikai Li University of Chicago
February 14: Arthur Spiriling Princeton University
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Thursdays 3:30 - 5pm in Pick Hall 506 & Zoom
February 8: Matt Malis Texas A&M University “Diplomatic Capacity and International Cooperation”
February 15: Robert Pape University of Chicago “Understanding the Impact of Military Service on Support for Political Violence”
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Prof. Leyla Ismayilova, Lauren Beard, and co-authors write “On Deinstitutionalization and Family Reunification in FSU Countries” |
Lauren Beard, a CISSR 22-23 Rudolph Field Research Fellow, along with co-authors Professor Leyla Ismayilova, Emily Claypool, and Emma Heidorn published a paper about on institutionalized children and challenges of family reunification in the Children and Youth Services Review. The article focuses on the familial conventions, emotional and social dynamics of reunification in a post-Soviet society. The writers posit that the collectivist and emotionally repressed nature of FSU (Former Soviet Union) countries, and the strict reverence towards the elder members of the family further convolutes the emotionally complex process of reunification. This added complexity makes already challenging processes of reconnection, communication, and mutual understanding even more tedious to navigate. The study collected qualitative data in the form of semi-structured interviews from deinstitutionalized children between the ages of 8-16. The authors note that the temporary institutionalization of children in care facilities is more common in some of the FSUs than in the rest of the world, and is thought by families as a preventive measure against severe economic hardship. However, as the interviews reveal, these periods of institutionalization sometimes further deepens the existing gaps between the worlds of the family and the child, and the children are prone to perceive these periods as distancing, and no easily overcome. It is clear from the passages used in the piece that this move towards introversion is often caught but cannot be surpassed by the parents. However, the researchers found some of the deinstitutionalized children satisfy their need for open communication through peer networks they create during their time in the care institutions. although this tendency worries parents due to a mistrust of extrafamilial networks, children’s choosing other venues to be open in a way that ossifies the aforementioned cleavage between the family and the child. Read the article in Children and Youth Services Review.
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Genevieve Bates on the Status of International Criminal Courts and Tribunals |
Dr. Genevieve Bates, an incoming Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and ’21 Alumna of Political Science and CISSR 20-21 Dissertation Fellow, wrote on the enforceability of international criminal court rulings, former and current power structures in these courts, and the hierarchy of norms in the Völkerrechtsblog. Referring to the epigraph of the book International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability: In the Court's Shadow, written by Patryk Labuda, Dr. Bates argues that there has been a shift from international criminal court primacy, meaning that the international court ruling has normative superiority and precedence over domestic courts, towards a complementarity approach. Dr. Bates argues that the complementarity and the accommodation approach adopted by ICC led to domestic capacity-building. However, these changes also opened a space of impunity and more leeway to authoritarian judicial tendencies. As a result, arguments of bias, norm internalization, and political arguments relating to independence and sovereignty may get stuck in arguments about accountability. Throughout her piece, Dr. Bates suggests building strategic conflict between the domestic representatives of international criminal courts or the employees of criminal tribunal structures (ICTs) that serve as rough temporary equivalents or localized projection of ICC during specific trials. Dr. Bates argues that an approach of deeper and positive complementarity should be explored to account for the unavoidable impact of domestic politics on perceptions regarding international court proceedings and rulings.
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Professor James Robinson on Tax Aversion Tendencies in Africa |
Dr. James Robinson, Professor at UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and Political Science delved into the unconventional tax aversive tendencies in postcolonial African states. According to Prof. Robinson, populations in African states approach the state structure with an expectation of corruption powered by past experience and political observation. Therefore, they may be reluctant to pay heavy taxes as they have a conviction that these resources will not turn into public goods and services, at least not at a level that is directly proportional to the taxes collected. This lack of trust in government accountability, however, also leads to a diminishment of expectation in the public, ultimately lowering the standard of efficacy the social state has to meet in order to sustain its power. The mirror reflection of the exact same reasoning, then, creates the prediction that if taxed heavier, the public would be more demanding in terms of the provision of the said goods and services. Dubbed the “mobility argument” also by Prof. Robinson and colleagues, this argument then leads to an assumed reconciliation on an incomplete or less demanding social contract for both sides. This form of the social contract can both be read as an effect of the colonial social memory which makes the public less willing to engage in the structures that are aggregates of the colonial methods of governance, and as a defending of the civic and communal autonomy that tolerates lesser state service if left untouched. In the end, Robinson concludes that this form of a more tolerant social contract is informed by convictions about the government mechanisms and their character in the public, and a projected tax-proportional civic influence on the part of the government. The article published in Journal of African Economies can be read in full here.
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U.S. - China Relations: Where Do We Go From Here? |
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The University of Chicago International House hosted a conversation focused on the US-China relations and paid particular attention to trade, military, and diplomatic relationship between the two major powers. The speakers were Chang-Tai Hsieh, Phyllis and Irwin Winkelreid Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor of Modern Chinese History, and Zhiguo He, James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance at Stanford. They discussed the need for cooperation between great powers to make progress in some of the world’s most urgent problems like the climate crisis or emergent issues that will have significant impact on the global community. Hosted in partnership with One Shared World, a think tank that was founded amidst the pandemic to emphasize the need for cooperative thinking and unified action to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges, the conversation involved discussion about contention escalation, trade conflicts and cooperation, and diplomatic bridge-building. Professors emphasize the positive impact of the recent diplomatic efforts while acknowledging that the lack of inter-military relations poses the risk of escalation in an instant or within a structure of isolated decision-making inside the militaries. Professors also discussed the changing economic attitudes in the U.S. regarding Chinese economic development, the effect of different visions of governance on the said change as well as the trade relations between the two crucial players in world politics.
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