Grants given to promote interdisciplinary research

Pitt’s Global Studies Program awarded three Global Academic Partnership grants to projects… Pitt’s Global Studies Program awarded three Global Academic Partnership grants to projects that address current international issues. The grants are intended to strengthen interdisciplinary research.

The “Rise of Child Soldiers” Grant, which is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was awarded to the Ford Institute for Human Security at Pitt, and is being used to research the reasons for a dramatic increase in the number of child soldiers that has taken place during the past 15 years.

The grant will be used to fund a workshop at Pitt in September, which is part of a larger collaborative project between the Ford Institute and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo.

The project examines several questions interested in the growth in number of child soldiering.

One area focuses on the levels of protection at refugee camps and internally displaced prison camps, and how these levels affect the abduction of children, said Simon Reich, co-director of the project and director of the Ford Institute.

Abducted children are used as combatants, porters and sexual slaves for the rebel or government force that took them.

Also, the proliferation of small arms, such as lightweight machine guns, is a factor to consider in the rise of child soldiers.

Reich said that this research is being done to help address a growing human rights problem.

“It not only endangers the lives of children,” Reich said. “But it scars them for life. It teaches them that the solution to problems is violence and then they become violent adults.”

Workers on the project are looking at these issues in places all over the world, in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Another grant was awarded to a long-term project called “Globalization and Diversity/Inequality in Latin America: Challenges, Opportunities, Dangers” to fund a conference that will be held in March 2007.

Elizabeth Monasterios — associate professor of Latin American literatures — and Anibal Perez-Linan — associate professor of political science — formed the project to better understand the issues facing the Latin American models of neo-colonization and neo-liberal society-building.

Monasterios added that the project will also work to foresee any outcomes of the social movements rebelling against them.

Four topics will be addressed at the conference.

One will focus on the impact of new technologies and global communications in Latin America, such as using the Internet to promote causes, explained Perez-Linan.

Another will analyze how the impact of new leaders and forces has affected public policies and the organization of political parties.

A third panel will look into how Latin America’s opening to the world economy has affected such aspects as gender and class.

A final panel will focus on social movements in national and transnational contexts.

Scholars from the United States, Latin America and Europe will be attending the event, and they will all come from different disciplines.

A third grant will support a workshop for the project “Research in Sustainable Community Development,” where an agenda will be created to address areas of green construction and water that is conscientious of ethical and cross-cultural issues.

Larry Shuman, professor and associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Engineering, Kathleen DeWalt, professor of anthropology and Graduate School of Public Health professor, and Eric Beckman, Bayor Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, were jointly awarded this grant along with colleagues from the University of Brazil and the University of Puerto Rico.