This initiative has concluded its research.

The Weatherhead Center awarded the first Weatherhead Initiative in International Affairs faculty grant in March 2000 to Harvard professors Gary King of the Department of Government and Chris Murray of the School of Public Health. Their project, “Military Conflict as a Public Health Problem,” was launched in the 2000–2001 academic year.

The goal of the project was to convince the public health, international relations and statistical methodology communities of the benefits of treating military conflict as a...

This initiative has concluded its research.

The concept of identity has taken an increasingly prominent place in the social sciences of late. Analysis of the development of social identities themselves has become an important focus of scholarly research and scholars using social identities as the building blocks of social, political, and economic life, have attempted to account for a number of discrete outcomes by treating identities as independent variables. The dominant implication of the vast literature on identity is that social identities...

This initiative has concluded its research.

In March of 2002, a research team based at the Harvard Academy was awarded the Weatherhead Initiative Grant from Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The project “Religion in Global Politics” draws on the contributions of members of the Harvard faculty who are considered to be experts in their respective fields. These faculty include J. Bryan Hehir, former head of the executive committee of Harvard Divinity School; Samuel P. Huntington, chairman of the Harvard Academy and Albert J...

This initiative has concluded its research.

Cross-border financial capital flows have transformed the global economic and political landscape over the last fifty years. As financial capital mobility has increased, the ability to attract foreign capital and manage its impact on domestic structures has emerged as a central concern for policymakers in developed and developing countries. The premise of this research proposal is that cross-border flows of human capital are likely to play an equally influential role in shaping the political and...

This initiative has concluded its research.

How strong is the political backlash against globalization? To what extent are firms in different industries responding to new international economic pressures by lobbying their governments for more protection and support, and how are they altering their investment, hiring, and training practices? Has globalization changed the way workers regard job training or their willingness to change jobs and occupations? Has globalization affected men and women differently? How are trade associations and labor...

This initiative has concluded its research.

This initiative examined the demographic and humanitarian impact of the 1947 Partition of India. Against the backdrop of substantial mortality and population movement, the research examined the role of governments and voluntary agencies in carrying out the relief enterprise that was undertaken from 1946–1949 in response to Partition-related violence and distress. The first phase of the study addressed the western regions of British India affected by Partition, particularly the Punjab. The second...

This initiative has concluded its research.

This international multidisciplinary project analyzed the discursive and behavioral strategies that members of stigmatized groups use to cope with racism and discrimination. The project team compared the accounts of these strategies produced by middle and working class men and women ages 18 to 70. They focused on members of minority groups living in mixed cities: negros in Rio de Janiero, African-Americans in New York, and Ethiopian immigrants, Mizrahis, and Muslim Palestinian citizens in...

This initiative has concluded its research.

The eighth Initiative grant, launched in 2008, was led by Professors Rohini Pande of the Harvard Kennedy School and Erica Field of the Department of Economics. Their project, “Empirical Studies of the Economics of Urban Poverty Reduction,” examined how markets and institutions in urban areas of the developing world affect the prospects of the poor and the problem of ghettoization, with associated negative consequences for health, economic mobility, and social stability. The research team sought to...

This initiative has concluded its research.

In 2009–2010, a team composed of Professors Jacob Olupona, Harvey Cox, and Marla Frederick, and doctoral candidate Devaka Premawardhana, of the Harvard Divinity School, carried out a scholarly workshop at Harvard on the topic of “Pentecostalism in Transnational Perspective,” supported as the tenth Weatherhead Initiative. Their project sought to advance understanding of the worldwide phenomenon of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, its causes and effects, and the unquestioned stereotypes and...

This initiative has concluded its research.

In 2009–2010, the team of Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong of the Department of History, Professors Robert Bates and James Robinson of the Department of Government, and Professor Nathan Nunn of the Department of Economics began the ninth Weatherhead Initiative entailing research on “Understanding African Poverty over the Longue Durée.” Through this project the researchers sought to achieve a better understanding of why Africa’s economic performance has been so poor in the fifty years since...

This initiative has concluded its research.

As the eleventh Weatherhead Initiative grantees a team of researchers led by principal investigators Professors Michael B. McElroy of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Dale W. Jorgenson of the Department of Economics, and including Harvard-based researchers Chris P. Nielsen, Mun S. Ho, and Zhao Yu; Tsinghua University-based Cao Jing and Wang Yuxuan; and Lei Yu of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning...

This cluster began in 2011 as the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, before becoming the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Transformations in 2017.

[  Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Transformations (WIGH) Website  ]

Global history is one of the leading new approaches in recent years that has helped to transform the study of the past. The contemporary trends summarized under the term “globalization” have lent urgency to...

This initiative has concluded its research.

The mission of the Weatherhead Initiative on Gender Inequality (WIGi) is to shed light on the cultural, social, economic, and political forces that maintain and break down gender inequalities in postindustrial societies. We meet biweekly to discuss such issues and build an academic community bringing together those interested in the WIGi mission.

The team's research examines the dramatic changes in men’s...

This initiative has concluded its research.

Afro-Latin American studies is a nascent field, and it has already changed course rather dramatically in recent years. Whereas researchers used to study the effects of slavery in Latin America, over the past few decades mounting research has shifted focus toward documenting inequality, discrimination, and mobilization for racial justice. Scholars began debating the ideologies of racial democracy, with some blaming these ideologies for perpetuating racial discrimination and others arguing just the opposite....

This initiative has concluded its research.

Climate engineering, or geoengineering, is the deliberate, large-scale alteration of the climate system to counteract climate change caused by accumulating greenhouse gases. This initiative addresses some of the pertinent questions about climate change that fall outside the confines of the natural sciences, such as implications for politics, governance, economics, security, game theory, and more. By addressing these global topics, the research team hopes to fill in gaps in the existing literature.

The team...