News@E40

CIS awards 16 summer study grants

The Center is pleased to announce the recipients of its summer study grants. The grants are being awarded to sixteen doctoral students in international affairs at MIT. Each will receive up to $3,000 for summer studies, which may be used for fieldwork, archival research, or home-based research and write-up. Criteria for the awards include the importance of the research question, the quality of the research proposal, and strong letters of support.

News@E40

MISTI's global seed funds winners

A total of 97 faculty international research projects have received $1.99 million in funding from the 2012-2013 MISTI Global Seed Funds competition. These projects were selected from among 196 proposals submitted by faculty and research scientists from 22 departments across the Institute. MISTI Global Seed Funds (MISTI GSF) was established to enhance the internationalization of MIT research and education. Since 2008, the program has awarded $6 million to 304 projects.

News@E40

Rovner wins ISSS best book award

The International Security Studies Best Book Award Selection Committee announced the selection of Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Cornell University Press, 2011) as the recipient of this year's prize. "Forty-seven very good books were nominated, but Dr. Rovner's book was the unanimous choice for its outstanding contribution—both methodologically and substantively—to the understanding of a challenging and understudied area of our field," said the Committee.

News@E40

Luce fellowship deadline Oct. 22

Monday, October 22, is this year's deadline for the Luce Scholars Program. Young scholars from a wide variety of intellectual fields will be placed in 10-month internships in selected countries in Asia. The fellowship is aimed for those with no prior experience in the region. Nominees must be American citizens not yet 30 years old on July 1, 2013, and who have earned at least a bachelor's degree or expect to receive one by July 1, 2013. More information.

News@E40

Urban resilience: cities coping with violence

Ordinary people show remarkable capacities for coping with and resisting violent actors in some of the world's most dangerous cities, a new study from the Center shows. "Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence," a two-year undertaking led by former MIT professor Diane Davis and Center executive director John Tirman, examined eight cities to answer questions about what adaptive strategies communities adopt in response to criminal and other forms of persistent violence. The study uncovers new insights into conditions of "positive" resilience, in which communities forge and utilize social relationships within their neighborhoods and negotiate productive relations with city and state officials, police, business leaders, and the like. Not all cities achieve this outcome, however. 

MIT graduate students and researchers from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva spent several weeks doing field research in Johannesburg, Kigali, Managua, Medellín, Mexico City, Nairobi, and São Paolo, with remote research on Karachi, under a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The 132-page main report was written by Diane Davis, now professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and a CIS Research Affiliate. Davis and Tirman presented findings to USAID and an audience of policy professionals at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in July. The study will be discussed in several more forums, emphasizing its utility to practitioners—governments, NGOs, multilateral agencies, and others.

News@E40

Turkey's new global activism

CIS organized a three-day workshop in Istanbul, April 12-14, to assess Turkey's new global role and its application of hard and soft power in its region. Hosted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the workshop brought together scholars and practitioners from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, including leading Turkish intellectuals and officials. Along with CIS executive director John Tirman, the meeting was shaped by Professor Mario Zucconi (Princeton), Professor Kristin Fabbe (Claremont McKenna), who recently earned a Ph.D. in political science from MIT, and Michael Meier of the Ebert Foundation. Presentations were also made in Ankara to the diplomatic corps, and will be forthcoming in Washington, D.C., Brussels, and Berlin. The workshop prompted considerable coverage in Turkey, and the organizers expect further engagement.

News@E40

CIS summer study grant

Doctoral students in international affairs may receive up to $3,000 in summer support for dissertation research on a broad range of global issues. Grants may be requested either for fieldwork and/or archival research, or for home-based research and writeup. The main criteria for determining awards will be the importance of the research question and the quality of the research proposal, and the strength of the letter of support. The deadline for applications is Tuesday, April 3, 2012. More information about the CIS Summer Study Grant. For those applying, read the FAQ.

News@E40

IUCIM and CIS honor Sharon Stanton Russell

Sharon Stanton Russell, a mainstay of migration studies at MIT and the Inter-University Committee on International Migration, was honored with a IUCIM symposium and dinner on February 7 at CIS. Russell, who had a long association with the late CIS director Myron Weiner, a leading migration theorist, has been a leader of IUCIM for fifteen years. She has made major contributions to migration studies, including pioneering work on remittances for the World Bank. Among other works, she was co-editor with Weiner of Demography and National Security. Russell has also had long associations with the University of Sussex, the United Nations, and the National Academy of Sciences. The Feb 7 symposium featured presentations by six Committee members: Karen Jacobsen (Tufts), Nazli Choucri (MIT), Robert Lucas (Boston U.), Peggy Levitt (Wellesley), John Harris (Boston U.), and Luise Druke (Harvard Law School). Michael Teitelbaum, another collaborator on cutting edge research with Russell, led a number of accolades at the dinner. 

News@E40

MISTI helps empower teachers

Empowering the Teachers is a new project to enable outstanding young Nigerian faculty in science and engineering to collaborate with MIT faculty to develop new curriculum and teaching methods. The program is a collaboration of MISTI and its corporate partners Total and Google. Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande (featured in photo), professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, is the director.