As part of the 20th anniversary series, the IDRF staff speaks with 2002 International Dissertation Research Fellowship recipient Eric Jarosinski.
From Our Fellows
The SSRC has been providing funding to researchers at all stages of their academic and professional careers for more than 90 years. Through a highly competitive and rigorous peer-review process, the SSRC has awarded over 15,000 fellowships and grants to support research around the globe. From Our Fellows focuses on emerging research in the social sciences, including intersections with the humanities and natural sciences, by recipients of SSRC funding. The SSRC’s fellowships, grants, and prizes improve conditions for social science knowledge production worldwide.
From Our Fellows
The Practical Effects of Comparative-Historical Sociology
by Ho-fung Hung
Ho-fung Hung makes the case for the continued relevance of comparative-historical sociology to our “Interdisciplinarity Now” theme. In ways related Steinmetz’s earlier contribution to the series, Hung illustrates the multiple ways in which the combination of historical work with a macrosociological framework yields deep insights into long-term processes that generate inequality and the responses to it. He also argues that this long-term and large-scale perspective is critical in the formation of policies and the strategies of social movements that pursue progressive social change.
From Our Fellows
The Banality of Infrastructure
by Nikhil Anand
Nikhil Anand’s contribution to the “Just Environments” series examines the making of urban inequality, focusing on water infrastructure as a key site for banal yet fundamentally political decision-making that neglects or harms poor citizens. In both Flint and Mumbai, environmental injustice is generated through bureaucratic routines that rarely take into account the humans they affect. Challenging these injustices, Anand argues, requires engaging in the "boring" technopolitics of infrastructure.
From Our Fellows
From Dissertation to Book: Recent Alumni Authors Reflect on the Transformation Process
by Nirali Vyas
In this resource, three Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) alumni give advice about turning a dissertation into a book. They discuss their individual book projects and share tips for other scholars.
From Our Fellows
The Text, the Law, and the Classroom: An Interview with Ahmed El Shamsy
by IDRF Program
As part of the 20th anniversary series, the IDRF staff speaks with 2006 International Dissertation Research Fellowship recipient Ahmed El Shamsy.
From Our Fellows
Border Matters: Gender, Precarity, and the Body on Mexico’s “Forgotten Frontier”
by Heather Wurtz
A 2016 International Dissertation Research Fellowship recipient, Heather Wurtz is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University. Her dissertation research assumes an ethnographic approach along the Mexico-Guatemala border to examine how migrant women navigate their reproductive lives within complex institutional settings. The “Research Snapshots” series is an initiative aimed at highlighting important and innovative research by SSRC fellows who are currently conducting or who have recently returned from doing international research.
From Our Fellows
Tammany Hall in India, the Rise of Machine Politics: A Conversation with Tariq Thachil
by Emily Carroll and Adriana Stephan
In the first of the International Dissertation Research Fellowship 20th Anniversary interview series, Emily Carroll and Adriana Stephan speak with 2007 International Dissertation Research Fellowship recipient Tariq Thachil.
From Our Fellows
Gender Refugees and Border Lines: An Interview with Dr. B Camminga
by Francesca Freeman
B Camminga, a 2016-17 Next Generation Social Sciences Completion Fellow, studies transgender refugees establishing a new life in South Africa. SSRC staff, Francesca Freeman and Natalie Reinhart, interviewed B at a workshop in Nairobi, and B shared reflections on their dissertation research.
From Our Fellows
Military Humanitarianism and Africa’s Troubling “Forces for Good”
by Danny Hoffman
Danny Hoffman’s new essay explores the expansive role of militaries as “armed first responders,” which has become “the new normal of humanitarian intervention.” Based on his research on both the US and Liberian armies as they intervened in the 2014 Ebola crisis, Hoffman shows the connections between the actions of the two forces. In particular, he examines how the focus on training Liberian forces to counter violent extremism by the Americans shaped how the Liberian military, with tragic consequences, approached its role in containing the Ebola epidemic. This essay is cross-posted on Kujenga Amani, the digital forum of the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council.