2024 Graduate Summer Fellows Arrive at the Pardee Center

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future recently welcomed the 17th cohort of its Graduate Summer Fellows program to the Center. This year’s session includes BU graduate students representing seven different academic departments. Over the course of the 10-week program, the Fellows will complete research papers while participating in activities and events designed to advance interdisciplinary research and learning. Learn more about this year’s Fellows and their research.

Pardee Center Mourns the Passing of Visiting Fellow Pablo Suarez

The Pardee Center mourns the unexpected passing of Pablo Suarez, a long-time Visiting Research Fellow, collaborator, and friend. For more than 15 years, Pablo frequently and generously shared his magnetic personality and infectious energy with the Pardee Center community. He was an innovative thinker who brought a unique mix of creativity and humor to his work on risk communication, climate change, development, and humanitarianism. Read more.

New Paper: “Desire for Diverse Menstrual Care: Contextualizing Period Poverty with Turkish Menstruators”

In a new Pardee Paper, Bahar Aldanmaz, a 2022 Graduate Summer Fellow and PhD candidate in sociology, draws on a survey of more than 4,000 Turkish menstruators to explore ways to link the menstrual justice movement with reproductive justice, feminist health, and consumer and environmental rights. She offers 10 policy recommendations targeted at civil society and grassroots organizations, government entities, donors, and menstrual product companies in Türkiye. Read more.

New Paper: “Between Cohesion and Control: Shequ Governance during China’s Zero-COVID”

In a new Issues in Brief, Xuyi Zhao, a 2023 Graduate Summer Fellow and PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology, explores how China’s draconian zero-COVID policy was made possible on a daily basis, and what implications this top-down initiative engendered for urban governance and community building in urban China. Based on her 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Chengdu, she presents “the Community” (shequ) as a dynamic interface between the state and the individual citizens that often oscillates between the paradoxical aspects of social cohesion and political control. Read more.