SSRC President Ira Katznelson on the 20th Anniversary of IDRF

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) program at the Social Science Research Council. Since 1997, with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, IDRF has provided support for more than 1,200 PhD students pursuing dissertation research across the globe.

SSRC IDRF fellows have gone on to be leading scholars in their fields, providing rich contributions to scholarship. Beyond academia, the program’s fellows have gone on to achieve success across many different career paths.

In recognition of the contributions that IDRF has made to the US scholarly community, the program will be featuring the work of our esteemed alumni whose research benefited from its support early in their careers. We celebrate the work of our fellows—past, present, and future—and IDRF’s continued commitment to young scholars.

Anniversary International Dissertation Research Fellowship

Ira Katznelson

Ira Katznelson has been Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University since 1994 and, since 2012, president of the Social Science Research Council. He has participated in SSRC activities in prior years, including membership on the Council's Committee on States and Social Structures in the 1980s and on the Board of Directors starting in 2008. In 2014, his Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time was awarded the Bancroft Prize in History and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in Political Science. Professor Katznelson has served as president of the American Political Science Association and Social Science History Association, and as chair of the Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees. He is a research associate at Cambridge University's Centre for History and Economics.

Ira Katznelson

Mobilizing social science for the public good.

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