麻豆区

Congratulations to Professors聽Sumitra Badrinathan, Sarah Khan, Samantha Bradshaw, and Jesse Ribot, who have been announced as this year's SIS Research Fellows.

Sumitra Badrinathan and Sarah Khan are the winners of the SIS Collaborative Research Award (CRA) for their new, interdisciplinary research project.

• Their project addresses how gender shapes individuals鈥� susceptibility to misinformation, and their resistance to efforts to counter it, such as fact-checks or corrections. They will study this phenomenon in India and Pakistan, where levels of gender inequality are high, and gender is a highly salient social division.
• They will examine 3 questions: 1) In patriarchal settings, are men more susceptible to misinformation, and more resistant to corrective interventions? 2) Is this tendency exacerbated in highly gendered domains of knowledge, such as electoral politics? 3) What approaches work to effectively counter misinformation among men? Funding from the SIS CRA will serve to gather survey, interview, and focus group data to answer questions 1 and 2. They will then apply for a grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) Governance Initiative to conduct a field RCT experimental study to answer question 3.

Samantha Bradshaw and Jesse Ribot are the joint winners this year of, and will share the funding associated with, the SIS High-Performing Scholar (HPS) Award, recognizing their recent high productivity and supporting future grant applications.

• While existing research has primarily framed the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing around energy consumption and carbon emissions, Professor Bradshaw鈥檚 project will expand the research by introducing water use as a critical yet underexplored dimension. In regions already experiencing water scarcity, growing water demands for AI and cloud computing intensify existing governance challenges, raising critical concerns regarding sustainability, equity, and regulatory oversight. Her research will address the question, 鈥淗ow, then, do institutions and policymakers navigate these competing demands, balancing digital infrastructure expansion with sustainable water management to ensure equitable resource distribution?鈥� With the SIS HPS award, Bradshaw will conduct field research, develop a dataset, engage policymakers, and write proposals. Potential funders include the National Science Foundation (NSF) Responsible Design Program, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Canada, the Stimson Center, the Stockholm International Water Institute, and the Open Society Foundations.
• Building on his prior work on how 鈥榤arket grabbing鈥� from agricultural and forestry products causes seasonal hunger in Senegal, Professor Ribot will 1) identify the mechanisms by which each market is being grabbed; 2) explain the political origins of the mechanisms in each market by which few merchants maintain large margins and market shares; and 3) examine successful collectives acting on behalf of farmers to recapture surpluses for rural reinvestment. As a follow-on to this work, Ribot will submit a $1.6M DANIDA Fellowship Center proposal with University of Copenhagen collaborators. He also plans to submit proposals to the Danish Research Council, Ford Foundation鈥檚 Collaborative Fund to Strengthen Democracy in West Africa, Hewlett鈥檚 Transparency Initiative, the UK鈥檚 Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and the European Commission鈥檚 Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation sub-programme.