Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
#MeToo: Tackling Harassment in Academic Publishing
The #MeToo movement has slowly spread across to other sectors as people begin to come forward with their own stories of sexual harassment and bullying. In academic publishing, this conversation was in part started in February by Alison’s Mudditt’s powerful post on The Scholarly Kitchen. Muddit chaired a recent panel looking at sexual harassment, and ways to combat it, at the annual ALPSP conference.
Economics Nobel Recognizes Nature and Knowledge
Two academics who have integrated what might have once seemed like non-economic externalities into economic models have been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics. The winners are William D. Nordhaus of Yale University, cited for integrating climate change into macroeconomic analysis, and Paul M. Romer of New York University’s Stern School of Business, cited doing the same with technological innovations.
Five with Social Science Credentials Win MacArthur Grants
Five people with backgrounds in social, behavioral or data science were among 25 named in the 2018 class of MacArthur Foundation fellows. The fellowship and grant program, sometimes referred to as the “genius grant,” awards exceptionally creative people with $625,000 – no strings attached — in expectation that based on their track record they will achieve something important in the future.
The Dean of ‘Ism’ Studies: Walter Laqueur, 1921-2018
Walter Laquer, who fled the Holocaust, experienced the birth of Israel, founded the ‘Journal of Contemporary History,’ and was an unflinching sentinel against terrorism and an authoritarian Russia, died on September 30. He was 97.
Washington and Social Science: Rare Accord Seen in Appropriations
For the first time in more than 20 years, Congress enacted into law the annual Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Act prior to the end of the fiscal year and for the first time in more than 10 years it did the same for the Defense Appropriations Act. What it didn’t do is approve the bill that funds the National Science Foundation.
Andrew Leigh on Randomistas
When Angus Deaton crafted the term ‘randomista’ to denigrate the rampant use of randomized controlled trials in development economics, Angus Leigh saw an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons. In this Social Science Bites podcasts he explains how he turned randomista into a compliment and promotes the use of trials to improve social programs worldwide.
Archived Webinar: Voicing Movements in the Face of Censorship
Each year since 1982 the American Library Association has spearheaded a celebration of books that have been suppressed or banned. Two authors of banned books, a sociologist and the deputy editor of ‘Index on Censorship’ discusses banned books in this archived webinar.
Geographer Gardner to Head Academy of Social Sciences
The longtime director of the Royal Geographical Society, Rita Gardner CBE, will be the new chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Academy of Social Sciences. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Stephen Anderson after more than 10 years.
