Latest News

Sociology Ph.D. candidate wins Guggenheim Dissertation Fellowship for investigation of police reform and violence in Rio de Janeiro

Stefanie Israel de Souza, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and a dissertation year fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, has been awarded a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. She is one of just 10 students from across the country to win the prestigious award, which supports Ph.D. candidates in their final year of dissertation completion.

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Theology Ph.D. candidate Craig Iffland wins Newcombe Fellowship

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: Graduate Students, Research, and Centers and Institutes

Craig Iffland, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Theology, has been named a 2017 recipient of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. He is one of only 21 scholars from across the country to receive the award, the nation’s largest and most prestigious for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences who are addressing questions of ethical and religious values

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Sociologist Terence McDonnell explores impact of “cultural entropy” on media campaigns in Ghana

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

A new book by Notre Dame Sociologist Terence McDonnell examines why expensive media campaigns that try to harness the power of culture to change beliefs or behavior often fail. Using AIDS campaigns in Ghana as his central case study, he lays out an argument that carries important implications for diverse types of media campaigns around the world.

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Historian Ted Beatty wins 2016 AHA Friedrich Katz Prize

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

Edward “Ted” Beatty, professor of history, associate dean for academic affairs at the Keough School of Global Affairs, and faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Friedrich Katz Prize for his book Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico (University of California Press, 2015). The Katz Prize is awarded annually by the American Historical Association (AHA) to honor the best book in Latin American and Caribbean history.

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New Democracy Dataset to ‘Revolutionize’ Democracy Research

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

p(image-right). !/assets/82383/mcoppedg_icon.jpg(Michael Coppedge)! A five-year collaboration between institutions in the United States and Sweden has resulted in a new, public dataset for researchers of democracy. According to Notre Dame political scientist and Kellogg Faculty Fellow Michael Coppedge, one of four principal investigators who have led the five-year effort, the data release promises to “revolutionize” quantitative research on democracy.

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Political Scientist's New Book Shows Impact of Education on Voter Participation in Mali

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, and Faculty News

p(image-right). !/assets/133099/bleck_icon.jpg(Jaimie Bleck)!

In a new book, Education and Empowered Citizenship in Mali (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Jaimie Bleck, an assistant professor of political science, explores the relationship between schooling, political knowledge, and political participation in Mali, where access to education nearly tripled in the two decades following the country's 1991 transition to multiparty democracy.

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Sociology Ph.D. Student Wins SSRC, Fulbright Grants for Brazil Research

p(image-right). !/assets/164475/dscf0141_141_icon.jpg(Stefanie Israel icon)! Stefanie Israel, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, has been awarded a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship to support her comparative ethnography of four “pacified” favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Earlier this year, she was awarded a Fulbright Study-Research Grant for the same project. The funding will allow Israel to spend all of 2016 conducting research in Rio. She will observe urban reform efforts in favela communities at a key point in time: before, during, and after the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, which have been a focus of protests sweeping across Brazil.

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Kellogg Announces International Development Fellowships to Graduating Seniors

p(image-right). !/assets/68955/seal_85_x_111.jpg(Notre Dame seal)! The Kellogg Institute for International Studies has named five graduating seniors--all of whom have majors or minors in the College of Arts and Letters--as recipients of its International Development Fellowships (IDF) for the coming year. Members of the Notre Dame Class of 2015 Megan Fuerst, Matthew Hing, Emily Mediate, Chris Newton, and Laura Zillmer will work with four partner organizations across the developing world in the second year of the recently expanded program.

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Sociology Ph.D. Student Wins Fulbright for Research in Brazil

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: Graduate Students, General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, and Internationalism

p(image-right). !/assets/160537/stefanie_israel_icon.jpg(Stefanie Israel)! Stefanie Israel, a Ph.D. student in Notre Dame's Department of Sociology and Ph.D. fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, has been awarded a nine-month Fulbright Study-Research Grant. The prestigious funding, to begin in March 2016, will allow her to complete dissertation research in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she is conducting a comparative ethnography of four “pacified” favelas.

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NSF Funds V-Dem Research on Consequences of Democratization

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

p(image-right). !/assets/82383/mcoppedg_icon.jpg(Michael Coppedge)! The National Science Foundation has awarded $277,000 to three members of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) team for research that uses new data to identify the impact of specific types of democracy on economic development and infrastructure. A $77,588 share of the grant goes to Michael Coppedge, a professor in the Department of Political Science, one of V-Dem’s four PIs.

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Award-winning Book Offers New Theory on Democratization in Latin America

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Alumni, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

p(image-right). !/assets/139867/scott_mainwaring_icon.jpg(Scott Mainwaring)! A new book coauthored by Scott Mainwaring, Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, an alumnus of the University, presents a striking new theory of democratization that has earned it two major prizes in comparative politics. Mainwaring, a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and Pérez Liñán, a Notre Dame Ph.D. who is now an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, spent a decade thinking about theories of regime change and analyzing political regimes in Latin America.

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Political Scientists Win USAID Grants to Investigate Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance in Africa

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

p(image-right). !/assets/133154/bleck_and_dowd_icon.jpg(Jaimie Bleck, left, and Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C.)! When USAID announced winners of a new, nationwide competition for innovative projects in the field of democracy, human rights, and governance last week, scholars from the University of Notre Dame's Department of Political Science and Kellogg Institute for International Studies had won two of the nine awards.

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Two Prominent South African Anti-Apartheid Participants to Speak at Notre Dame

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Centers and Institutes, and Internationalism

Two prominent South African participants in the anti-apartheid struggle will speak at the University of Notre Dame on Wednesday, March 19, and Thursday, April 3, as part of the Africa Working Group's “Celebrating Nelson Mandela” series. One a liberation theologian and political activist, the other the “Jackie Robinson of South Africa,” they each played a crucial role in moving their nation out of apartheid.

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International Collaboration to Receive $5.8 Million for Democracy Research

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

An ambitious international research effort to illuminate why democracies around the world succeed or fail has been awarded approximately $5.8 million over six years by the Swedish foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The Varieties of Democracy project, based in the U.S. at the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies and in Europe at the University of Gothenburg’s Varieties of Democracy Institute, promises to make entirely new kinds of democracy research and policy assessment possible by quantifying democracy in all countries from 1900 to the present.

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Collaborative Effort Brings Leading Development Economists to Notre Dame

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

Five of the world’s preeminent development economists are visiting Notre Dame this spring as part of the series “New Frontiers in Economic Development,” sponsored by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies in collaboration with the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Letters.

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Varieties of Democracy Project Awarded European Commission Funding

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Undergraduate News, Research, Internationalism, and Faculty News

The Varieties of Democracy project (V-Dem), an ambitious international research collaboration based at Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies, has been awarded €475,000 (about $616,500) in research support from the European Commission. Led by Notre Dame political scientist Michael Coppedge, Staffan Lindberg of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and John Gerring of Boston University, the multiyear project aims to produce better indicators of democracy, helping to illuminate why democracies around the world succeed or fail.

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Jaimie Bleck Wins Award for Best Dissertation in African Politics

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

University of Notre Dame political scientist Jaimie Bleck has won the 2011 Lynne Rienner Award for Best Dissertation in African Politics from the American Political Science Association’s Africa Politics Conference Group (APCG). Bleck’s award-winning work, “Schooling Citizens: Education, Citizenship, and Democracy in Mali,” explores the political effect of education in the West African country.

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Historian Doubts Staying Power of 'Mexican Spring' Student Movement

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

Every six years, Mexicans go to the polls to elect a new president, and students erupt in protest, says University of Notre Dame historian Jaime Pensado, a fellow at the University's Kellogg Institute for International Studies. An expert on Mexican youth culture and student movements, Pensado says this year has been no different, as tens of thousands of students organized through social media took to the streets in the “Yo Soy 132” movement.

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Economics Research to Improve Sanitation in Africa Gets $1 Million Boost

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

Molly Lipscomb, assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and Laura Schechter and Jean-François Houde, economists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, hope to increase the accessibility of sanitation technology in poor neighborhoods in Dakar, Senegal. Their two-year research project is supported by a more than $1 million grant to Innovations for Poverty Action from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Scholars to Discuss Global Health and Liberation Theology

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, Catholicism, and Faculty News

Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology at Notre Dame and a Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow, is known around the world as the founder of liberation theology. Among the many people he inspired is Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist, physician, chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a founding director of Partners in Health. Their dialogue, “Re-imagining Accompaniment: Global Health and Liberation Theology,” will take place on Monday, October 24 at 7 p.m. in Room 101 of DeBartolo Hall. Part of the Discussions on Development series, the event is free and open to the public.

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Daniel Brinks Provides Expertise on “Measuring Law” at IFI Roundtable

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, and Faculty News

A high-profile roundtable in Washington, D.C., gave Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow Daniel Brinks the opportunity to advise international financial institutions (IFIs) on how to improve their evaluations of the developing world’s legal systems. Organized by the Center on Law and Globalization, the “Measuring Law: How to Do It Right in Real World Circumstances” roundtable on March 23, 2010, brought together senior legal staff of IFIs such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and academic experts such as Brinks.

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Notre Dame to Host Brazilian Carnaval

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Centers and Institutes, and Internationalism

Vibrant Brazilian dance rhythms will transport revelers from South Bend to the streets of Rio de Janeiro during the University of Notre Dame's 12th annual celebration of Brazilian Carnaval, to be held Feb. 12 (Friday) from 8 p.m. to midnight in Notre Dame’s South Dining Hall. The family-friendly event is free and open to the public.

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Notre Dame Launches International Development Studies Minor

Author: Elizabeth Rankin

Categories: General News, Centers and Institutes, and Internationalism

Interest in international development issues runs high among University of Notre Dame undergraduates, many of whom have studied or served in the developing world. Now they have a new way to connect their experiences overseas with their own academic development—a Kellogg Institute for International Studies minor that integrates coursework and fieldwork.

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