2019 Global Inquiries Fund Grants Announced

Steven J. Fluharty, Dean and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience, has announced the third round of grants from the Dean’s Global Inquiries Fund. The initiative provides support for global teaching and research projects across the liberal arts.

“These projects demonstrate the vital importance of the liberal arts when it comes to global challenges,” says Fluharty. “Penn Arts & Sciences faculty are bringing students, scholars, and policymakers together to share knowledge and generate new ideas.”

The following projects were selected to receive up to $50,000 to support a variety of activities including research, conferences, workshops, and course development. The collaborative projects exemplify the School’s commitment to driving global change, a key priority in the Power of Penn Arts & Sciences fundraising campaign.

Collaborative Pedagogies in the Global History of Science: Juan-Sebastián Gil-Riaño, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science, leads the organization of a workshop focusing on the shared challenges and possibilities of teaching the history of science, technology, and medicine from a global perspective. The workshop will bring together historians and students of science with different regional specialties with the goal of generating collaborative strategies and resources. Projit Mukharji, Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science; Harun Küçük, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science; Ramah McKay, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science; Marcy Norton, Associate Professor of History, and Ian Petrie, Associate Director at Center for Teaching and Learning will assist on this project, along lecturers and doctoral students from History and Sociology of Science.

International Organizations in Crisis: Led by Julia Gray, Associate Professor of Political Science, this project adds a Penn conference to a series of events seeking to establish an international network of scholars studying death, drift, and change in international organizations such as the European Union and the World Trade Organization.  The conference will include Penn graduate and undergraduate students, as well as speakers from around the world, all working toward impact on policy and scholarship. Mitchell Orenstein, Professor and Chair of Russian and East European Studies, and David Zaring, Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at Wharton, are also involved in this project.

Rivers Have Memory: Community Recovery of a Watershed in Times of Conflict and Transition: Kristina Lyons, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, will lead 10 months of field research in the western Colombian Amazon, working on a project that supports community governance, recovery, and conservation of the Mandur River watershed. This publicly engaged environmental humanities work supports collaborations across the Americas by connecting Penn graduate students at with students at the Universidad de Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia through the coursework and workshops. Bethany Wiggin, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Director of Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, and Deborah Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography, are also part of this project.