Penn Arts and Sciences Faculty Among First Recipients of India Research and Engagement Fund Awards

University of Pennsylvania Provost Wendell Pritchett and Vice Provost for Global Initiatives Ezekiel Emanuel have announced the first recipients of the Penn India Research and Engagement Fund (Penn IREF) awards. Five members of the Penn Arts and Sciences faculty are among the project leaders.

Launched in October 2017, the Penn IREF awards represent another milestone in Penn’s engagement in India. During the next two years Penn IREF will award as much as $2 million in matching research grants to Penn faculty to stimulate and support research activity in India. The inaugural Penn IREF grants, totaling $800,000 in matching funds from the Provost’s Office, support 15 projects involving researchers across eight of Penn’s 12 schools and six centers and institutes.

“The first tranche of Penn IREF awards represents Penn’s commitment to the integration of knowledge across disciplines,” said Pritchett. “These cross-disciplinary, highly collaborative projects highlight the breadth of expertise across Penn’s Schools and Centers and support partnerships with over 40 Indian institutions, universities and organizations while building on relationships and collaborations with nearly a dozen U.S. and international partners.”

Projects led by Penn Arts and Sciences faculty are:

The Inhabited Sea
Principal Investigators: Nikhil Anand, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and Anu Mathur, School of Design

Evaluation of the Magic Bus Foundations’ Sports-Based Curriculum Targeted to Improve Health, Education, and Gender Attitudes among Adolescents in Rural India
Principal Investigator: Jere Behrman, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Economics

Social Norms, Behavioral Change, and Sanitation: Initiating a Large-scale Sociocentric Network Study to Understand the Open Defecation “Puzzle” in India
Principal Investigator: Cristina Bicchieri, Sascha Jane Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics in Philosophy

Biological and Cultural Diversity of South Indian Landscapes: Histories, Conservation, and Livelihoods
Principal Investigator: Kathleen Morrison, Sally and Alvin V. Shoemaker Professor of Anthropology

Determinants of Ethnic vs. National Identification in India: Evidence from Kashmir
Principal Investigator: Nicholas Sambanis, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science

To read the full announcement, click here.

To read more about the projects, click here.