A PhD with a Difference
NSF Funds Doctoral Program on Inequality
Brown University has received a prestigious award from the National Science Foundation to advance doctoral training and research on economic, social, and political inequalities in developing countries. The NSF is providing the five-year grant for $3.1 million under its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, which encourages interdisciplinary academic training for US doctoral students. The program will be part of a broader initiative including partner institutions in the Global South.
The Graduate Program in Development (GPD) is an interdisciplinary initiative sponsored by the Watson Institute for International Studies and supported by an IGERT (Integrated Graduate Education Research and Training) grant from the NSF. GPD seeks to promote social science research on processes of social, political and economic transformation in the developing world with a special focus on the persistent problem of inequality. Inequalities of well-being and opportunity represent the most difficult and persistent obstacles to promoting equitable, democratic and sustainable development. As the problems of development and inequality become ever more complex and global, GPD aims to provide graduate students with the interdisciplinary skills that innovative research calls for.
The program supports training and research for PhD candidates in Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology by offering specialized courses, funding field-based research, providing fellowships, hosting visiting faculty and promoting collaborative research initiatives with partner institutions in the global south. The program builds on a core group of faculty internationally renowned for their research and scholarship in the area of development and inequality.
Program activities are open to all PhD students at Brown. In addition to hosting trainees supported by their department, the GPD program admits 4-8 fellows a year who receive full support for two years. All trainees and fellows are eligible for summer fieldwork research grants.
The program is co-directed by Patrick Heller (director of GPD, e-mail) and Barbara Stallings (director of IGERT, e-mail) .