ISPS Announces New Research and Conference Grant Awards

Authored By 
Rick Harrison
December 11, 2024

Klaudia Wegschaider, a postdoctoral associate with ISPS's Democratic Innovations program, received a grant to understand the mechanism behind simultaneous referendum proposals.

The Institution for Social and Policy Studies seeks to understand critical challenges in the world and support rigorous scholarship and evidence-based solutions. In support of this mission, ISPS funds research using field experiments and innovative survey methods, research exploring democratic innovations, as well as conferences addressing important social and public policy issues.

“The heart of our work at ISPS has always been conducting and sharing research,” said ISPS Director Alan Gerber, Sterling Professor of Political Science. “We are so fortunate to have talented and dedicated colleagues seeking knowledge and new methods to obtain knowledge along so many important lines of inquiry and across disciplines. The work ahead is more important than ever, and I am grateful for the opportunity to help us find answers together.”

ISPS’s latest grants include three field experiments:

  • The Impacts of Unconditional Cash Transfer for Homeless Families: Experimental Evidence from Illinois (John Eric Humphries and Winnie van Dijk, assistant professors of economics)
  • Understanding School District and Voter Preferences Over School Capital Investments (Barbara Biasi, assistant professor of economics)
  • Scaling Randomized Evaluations in Medicaid: Building Evidence on Cost-Effective Outreach Strategies (Jacob Wallace and Chima Ndumele, associate professors of public health)

In the Spring of 2024, ISPS funded faculty projects through Democratic Innovations, a program that identifies and tests new ideas for improving the quality of democratic representation and governance:

  • Public Perceptions of Using Artificial Intelligence in Policy and Political Processes (Seulki Lee-Geiller, associate research scientists)
  • Understanding Political Selection in Nepal (Rohini Pande, Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and director of the Economic Growth Center)
  • What Are the Effects of Monetary Incentives and Gratitude Expression on Governance Participation? (Eliza Oak, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Cast Vote Record Dissemination (Shiro Kuriwaki, assistant professor of political science)
  • Litigation as Democratic Innovation Incentivizing Administrative Response (R.A. Beck Boorstein, history Ph.D. candidate)

Fall funding for the Democratic Innovations program includes nine more projects:

  • VEST Precinct-Level Shapefiles with Statewide Election Returns (Shiro Kuriwaki)
  • The Policy Influence of Nonprofit Service Providers in Local Politics: Evidence from Qualitative Case Studies (Nicholas Ottone, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Writing a New Constitution in Uncertain Times: Democratic Innovations and Constitutional Reforms in Chile 2020-2022 (Antonin Lacelle-Webster, ISPS postdoctoral fellow)
  • Unionized Scientists: Federal Researcher Unions as Democratic Organizational Citizens Advocating for Increased Equitable Access (Ximena Benavides, EP&E postdoctoral lecturer)
  • State Medicaid Agencies and Administrative Investment: Capacity Building in Response to Medicaid Expansion Under the Affordable Care Act (Gabe Batista, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Distributive Preferences of Elected Local Leaders and Street-Level Bureaucrats (Manasi Rao, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Globalization, Inequality, and Populism (Haoyu Wu, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Deliberation or Cognitive Bias: Understanding the Mechanism Behind Simultaneous Referendum Proposal (Klaudia Wegschaider, Democratic Innovations postdoctoral fellow)
  • Tax Defiance in the Era of Economic Inequality: A Comparative Study (Raphaëlle Soffe, political science Ph.D. candidate)

We have provided funding for 12 new projects that advance survey methodology or pursue novel social science research questions through survey data:

  • Global Fashion Consumption and Sustainability: A Comparative Study of Public Policy and Consumer Behavior in the USA, Europe, and Israel (Meital Peleg Mizrachi, postdoctoral associate in economics)
  • Causal Generalization of Conjoint Experiments (Jiawei Fu, postdoctoral associate at ISPS)
  • Does Unreliable Electricity Hold Back Technology Adoption and Growth? (Eric Hsu, postdoctoral associate at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies)
  • The Impact of Entertainment Media on Abortion Attitudes (Natalie Hernandez, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Gatekeeping Bias (Matthew Koo, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Stalin Surveys Digitization Project (Liza Brover, economics Ph.D. candidate)
  • Recruiting Geographically Targeted Panel Surveys (Eric Scheuch, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Robust Emotion Induction in Online Surveys: Testing for the Effectiveness and Precision of Different Treatments (Amanda Weiss and Ekin Dursun, political science Ph.D. candidates)
  • The What and Why of Public Tax Policy Preferences (Patrick Sullivan, postdoctoral associate at APEX at ISPS)
  • Community-Guided Bioethics Public Opinion Survey (Stephen Latham, director and associate director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics)
  • The Political Effects of Racialized Public Opinion (Minali Aggarwal, political science Ph.D. candidate)
  • Costly Choices: Examining the Hidden Costs of Supporting Corrupted Politicians in Survey Experiments (Alberto Stefanelli, political science lecturer)

Finally, the latest funding for conferences:

  • Valuing American Governance (Christina Kinane, assistant professor of political science)
  • AI, Asia, and the Future of Work (Kalindi Vora, professor of ethnicity, race, and migration and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies)
  • Feeling Democratic: Harnessing Political Emotions in Democratic Systems (Hélène Landemore, professor of political science, and Antonin Lacelle-Webster, postdoctoral associate at ISPS)
  • Advances in Design-Based Causal Inference (P. Aronow, associate professor of political science)
  • A Second Conference on AI and Governance (Shir Raviv, ISPS external postdoctoral fellow)
  • The Politics and Policies of Inclusive Growth (Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs)
  • Politics and Law in the Administrative State (Christina Kinane and Ian Turner, assistant professors of political science)

ISPS conducts regular reviews on proposals for funding research and events. The next call for proposals will occur in the spring.