Announcing the 2024-25 Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph Field Research Grant Fellows |
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CISSR is pleased to announce the 2024-25 Lloyd & Susanne Rudolph Field Research Fellows. These sixteen students and their projects continue the legacy of field work research pioneered by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, exemplifying the variety of geographic, disciplinary, and methodological strengths from across the Social Sciences Division.
Their projects examine a wide range of topics, including the World Health Organization's contribution to contraceptive knowledge production through collaboration with national authorities; identifying barriers to school access for migrant children in Mexico; how anti-establishment attitudes and protest behavior is driven by perceptions of generalized government underperformance; the coordination of ecological, infrastructural, and labor rhythms with financial pressures in the oil industry; the social history of industrialization and urbanization in mid-twentieth century Mexico; among others.
These awards cover expenses associated with original fieldwork, archival research, and more, deepening understanding and improving research. CISSR is proud to support the future of social scientific research at the University of Chicago and beyond.
We invite you to read more about the field research fellows and their projects. Full abstracts can be found on our website.
Henry Bacha (Anthropology)
"Resettled Landscapes: Mitmaqkuna, Reducción, and the Negotiation of Empire in the Pampas River Valley (Ayacucho, Peru), A.D. 1400-1750"
Lautaro Cella (Political Science)
"The Emergence of Anti-Establishment Attitudes and Protest Behavior. Theory and Evidence from Argentina and Chile"
Miguel Fernandes (History)
"Diagramming Hands: Cognition, Computation, and Cross-Modality in the Middle Ages"
Carol Iglesias Otero (Anthropology)
"Oil out of Joint: Handling Time, Work, and Weather in Mexico’s Sureste Petrolero"
Claire Jones (History)
"Inter-Imperial Trade and the Formation of an Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1660-1720"
Juliet Kelso (Comparative Human Development)
"Welcome Home? Race, Representation, and Migrant Housing in Berlin"
Alexander Koenig (Comparative Human Development)
"Access or Exclusion? Administrative Barriers to School Enrollment for Migrant Children in Mexico"
So Yoon Lee (Sociology)
"K-pop as a Vocation: Vocational Training, Cultural Production, and Urban Centrism in South Korea’s Popular Music Industry"
Megan MacGregor (Anthropology)
"Modern Microbiomes: Dysbiosis, Health, and Therapeutics in Global Microbiome Science"
Ksenia Podvoiskaia (History)
"Inventing the Modern Schoolteacher: Teacher Training in the Early Nineteenth Century British Empire"
Katharine Reed (History)
"Desequilibrios y Desigualdades: Development, Work, and Family in Twentieth-Century Mexico"
Adam Saxton (Political Science)
"Classifying Conflicts: Legal Labels and the Use of Military Force"
Rachel Tils (History)
"Controlling the Antillean Internal Economy, 1763-1807"
David Westby (Political Science)
"Ultras and Populism"
Ziyuan Yang (Sociology)
"Contraception and WHO: Global Research, Geopolitics, and Contraceptive Knowledge"
Roberto Young (Anthropology)
"Mayan Language Revitalization in Historical Perspective"
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May 7
Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse and the Chicago Center on Democracy
12pm, 408 of Wieboldt Hall
CEAS, Seminary Co-Op
5:00pm, Seminary Co-op
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May 8
CSRPC
6pm-8pm, International House Assembly Hall
CEAS
5pm, Franke Institute for the Humanities
Chicago Center on Democracy
12:00pm - 1:15pm, Social Science Research Tearoom
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May 9
5:30pm, Social Sciences Research Building, Room 122
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May 13
Department of English Language and Literature
4:00pm, Swift Hall Third Floor Lecture Room
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John Brewer Book Talk
Volcanic: Vesuvius in the Age of Revolutions
5pm, SSRB Tea Room
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May 14
Department of English Language and Literature
4:00pm, Swift Hall Third Floor Lecture Room
12:00pm - 1:30pm, Social Science Tea Room
Seminary Co-op
5:00pm - 6:30pm, Harris School of Public Policy
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May 14
Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility
5:00-7:30PM The Keller Center, Sky Suite (KELL 4005)
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May 15
Department of English Language and Literature
4:00pm, Swift Hall Third Floor Lecture Room
The Chicago Center on Democracy, and Law, Letters, and Society
12:30pm - 1:30pm, Social Science Research Tearoom
The Chicago Center on Democracy and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization
2:30pm - 4:00pm, Social Science Research Tearoom
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May 16
Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity
5:00pm, Social Science Research, Room 122
Seminary Co-op
12:00pm, Harris School of Public Policy
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May 21
Seminary Co-op
6:00pm, 57th Street Books
The Chicago Center on Democracy and The Forum on Law and Legalities
4:30pm - 6:00pm, Social Science Research Building, John Hope Franklin Room (Room 224)
CISSR, Chicago Center on Democracy
12:30pm - 1:30pm, Pick Hall, Room 105
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Around Town and Down the Road |
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May 9
Northwestern University
Professor Rene Almeling, Yale University, presents: "Conceptualizing Climate Privilege"
12:30-2pm, Parkes Hall
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May 10
University of Illinois
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The Center for Social & Behavioral Science, College of Education, and Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute invite community-engaged researchers to network over coffee and doughnuts
10 a.m - 12pm, Siebel Center for Design East Terrace.
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Politics, History and Society Workshop
5-6:20 pm, in SSRB 305
May 16: "Spread the Risk or Shrink the State? How Public-Private Insurance Arrangements Induce Regulatory Myopia" Andrew Swift
PhD Candidate, UChicago Sociology
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4-5:30 SSRB 302
May 9: Ali Shariati and the Ghost of Frantz Fanon: A Detective Story
Prof. Alireza Doostdar
UChicago Divinity School
May 16: Chasing Ghosts: A Comparative
Reading of Galib and Keats
Prof. Arif Camoglu
NYU Shanghai
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5:00 to 6:20pm - The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, 5733 S. University Ave.
May 14: Panel Presentations by Students Earning a Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies
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East Asia: Transregional Histories
Regular Schedule 4:00 to 5:30pm, John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB
May 16: Arunabh Ghosh**
Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History, Harvard University
Paper title: TBD
Discussant: TBD
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12- 1pm, Pick 506
May 13: Sophie Loidolt
Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Practical Philosophy, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
“Public Spheres as Experiential Spaces”
May 20: Omar Safadi
PhD candidate, Political Science, University of Chicago
“Homophobia and the Reproduction of Sectarian Plurality in Post-Revolution Lebanon”
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Workshop on International Politics
3:30 – 5:00 p.m. in person (Pick 506) and via Zoom (password 208212)
May 9: Rochelle Terman
University of Chicago
May 16: Emily Tallo
University of Chicago
“Rewriting the Rules: Leader Mistrust and Interventionism in Foreign Policymaking”
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Wednesdays, 12:30-2:00 pm. Pick 105
May 22: Kate Randazzo
PhD Candidate, University of Chicago, History
“They Fell into the Hands of the Arabs: Narrativizing Violence Against Morisco Refugees in Northwestern Algeria”
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Pick 118
May 9, 2024: 4:30-6:00pm
“Emancipation in Slavery’s City”
Brodie Fischer, Professor of Latin American History
Cosponsored by LAHW
May 16: 5:00pm-6:30pm,
Qualifying Paper Session
“¿Vanguardia literaria o retroceso estético? Las voces campesinas de Juan Rulfo y Agustín Yáñez” – Azucena Garza (PhD Candidate in RLL)
“La Virgen del Cerro en la Villa Imperial de Potosí: revisiones en torno al sincretismo y representación de lo sagrado en los Andes” – Ricardo Soler (PhD Candidate in RLL)
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19-20 Rudolph Fellow Matthew Lowenstein Explores Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in Prewar China |
Matthew Lowenstein, a 2019-20 Rudolph Field Research Fellow and Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, delves into Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) in Shanxi province during the late imperial and Republican eras, spanning the 18th to 20th centuries. In this study, published in the Economic History Review, Lowenstein investigates how ROSCAs—communal financial groups where members contribute and borrow funds on a rotating basis—supported pre-industrial economic growth and facilitated commercial activities. The paper reveals that ROSCAs were widely utilized, presenting a competitive alternative to traditional Chinese financiers, who typically charged higher interest rates and provided less favorable terms for savers. It also highlights the liquidity of ROSCA shares, demonstrating that they were accessible to a wide range of participants, including commercial entities. This suggests that these communal financial mechanisms may have played a crucial role in promoting business and trade during this era.
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Botanical Evidence Shows Transformations in Land Use Practices during Inka and Spanish Colonial Rule |
Sandy Hunter, a 2020-21 dissertation fellow and Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society published "Plant Use and Peasant Politics under Inka and Spanish Rule at Ollantaytambo, Peru," in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. The paper examines how botanical evidence uncovers changes in plant use patterns during the Inka and Spanish occupations of the Andes, delving into connections between household plant use, agricultural practices, and ecological change. The research indicates that although the variety of plants remained relatively stable, political shifts led to significant transformations in land use practices. With the Inka's rise to power circa 1450 CE, new farmland was developed, and labor dynamics changed. During the Spanish colonization process that followed, Europeans introduced foreign plants and animals, established new systems of tribute, and restructured agricultural production by resettling local communities and establishing large Spanish-owned estates, known as haciendas. In response, Andean agrarian workers adjusted their plant sourcing methods, resulting in broader ecological changes throughout the region, as evidenced by archaeobotanical data from two occupations at Simapuqio-Muyupata.
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Professor Paul Staniland Writes About the Last 25 Years of Civil War Studies and Three Distinct Waves Within the Field
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Paul Staniland, professor of Political Science and 19-20, 23-24 CISSR Faculty Fellow, explores the development of the study of civil wars as a separate field in the 25th Anniversary volume of Civil Wars journal. In the modern world, civil wars are the main form of political violence, but the ways scholars study political violence has evolved, responding to external and internal shifts. Dividing the history of the field into three phases, Staniland argues the first focused on the civil wars and ethnic conflicts of the 1990s. When the September 11 attacks entered scholarly and everyday political discourse, the field expanded to examine violence and organization in civil wars, as well as interstate conflict. The third and current wave moves the field towards a broader study of political violence, beyond civil wars. Staniland situates his own research within the broader trajectory, looking at how it evolved during the second wave and into the third and how his work spread out to engage with topics related, but more adjacent, to the core questions of the second wave. Staniland shows how internal and external developments shape research.
Read the full article here.
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Professor Sabina Shaikh Co-Authors An Innovative Textbook for Urban Sustainability
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Sabina Shaikh, a Senior Instructional Professor in the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization and 17-21 CISSR Faculty Fellow, co-authored an innovative textbook about the challenges and opportunities associated with urban sustainability. Our Urban Future: An Active Learning Guide to Sustainable Cities draws from popular theories within education science and uses exercises and cases to introduce students to all the key subjects of the field. The book fills a gap within urban sustainability studies by providing a multi-disciplinary, exhaustive view of how to effectively teach it. Our Urban Future examines questions of environmental justice, how cities respond to climate change, ecosystem services and transects, and the design and patterning of urban elements. The book also includes links to external resources and downloadable data to support activities and provide perspectives on the creation of sustainable cities.
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ICYM: Not A World War, But A World At War: Professor Paul Poast on Plain English Podcast
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Paul Poast, associate professor of Political Science and CISSR Board Member, was featured on the podcast Plain English with Derek Thompson. They examined Poast's article "Not a World War but a World at War," published in The Atlantic, and the historic levels of global violence and conflict across the globe.
The episode opens with a discussion of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, and two recent papers published by the program’s researchers stating that the world is seeing the biggest surge in conflict in the past eighty years. With the wars in Ethiopia, cartel and gang violence increasing in Latin America, the crisis in Yemen, and many, many others, this might be the most violent period of the 21st century, with more total conflicts than any year since World War II. Thompson and Poast discusses five theories for why conflict is surging.
One of the ideas they discuss is the end of the Pax Americana, the period of relative peace in the world as the United States became the dominant power after WWII. Over the past 10-20 years, the role of the US has eroded and states such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have risen or resurged in their sphere of influence, creating a system of great power competition.
Having lost its status after WWII, Russia is striving to regain its role and restore its image in the international arena. This, on its own, might have caused new power clusters in the world and opened a new era of multipolarity.
Another possible propellant of rising conflict is technology and social networks. Social media contributes to the organization and crackdown of insurgent or self-determination efforts, as well as leading to acts of civil disobedience and protest. The environmental crisis is also expected to cause another surge of conflict worldwide.
You can listen to this episode featuring Poast here.
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