Faculty Research Fellows & Faculty Associates
Faculty Research Fellows
Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellows are awarded seed grants to lead multi-year interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research projects on future-oriented topics of global significance. The program is open to all full-time faculty from any Boston University school or college. Read about ongoing and past Faculty Research Fellows projects below.
Faculty Research Fellows Projects
 Prof. Michel Anteby, Questrom School of Business Prof. Alya Guseva, Sociology Prof. Ashley Mears, Sociology Faculty Research Fellows (2022-2023) Precarity and the Future of WorkPrecarious work describes work that is poorly paid, unprotected, and insecure. Once characteristic of low-skilled workers vulnerable to labor abuses, precarity now describes an increasing share of the American workforce. By regularly convening a community of scholars across disciplines – ranging from faculty members to doctoral students and guest speakers – that actively investigate the rise of precarity at work, the project team aims to encourage more research in this area, foster interdisciplinary collaborations, and impact policy discussion on this topic. After having soft-launched the “Precarity Lab” in Fall 2021, the goal is to further institutionalize it, grow the community, and expand its reach and impact. With issues of inequality at work and beyond becoming central to policy debate, it’s urgent to better understand what precarity at work might look like in coming decades, and what the implications of these new work arrangements might be. |
 Prof. Jeffrey Geddes, Earth & EnvironmentFaculty Research Fellow (2022-2024) Global Air Quality in the 22nd Century: The Role of Climate- and Land Use-Driven Perturbations to Atmospheric Nitrogen CyclingWhile we are familiar with anthropogenic sources of air pollution related to traffic or industry, emissions related to land use management and feedbacks in the biosphere from human-caused climate change will contribute increasingly to poor air quality in the coming decades. This project aims to quantify climate- and land use-driven changes to the atmospheric nitrogen cycle that may cause unexpected, and previously unexamined, impacts on global air quality. Using new parameterizations in a state-of-the-art Earth system model to describe reactive nitrogen emissions from soil, Prof. Geddes will explore how concomitant changes in land use, land cover, agricultural activities, and climate will contribute to ozone and particulate matter pollution through the end of the 21st century. The outcome of this work will inform both land management and climate mitigation policies by contrasting the projections of atmospheric nitrogen cycling across the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios, and by considering new externalities and socioeconomic costs of land-use change. |
 Prof. Joseph Harris, SociologyFaculty Research Fellow (2022-2024) Workshop on the Politics of Global HealthThe COVID-19 pandemic has indelibly seared the importance of global health into our collective imagination. The coronavirus has brought politics to the fore, laid bare global and regional inequalities, and underscored the importance of effective transnational cooperation and global health governance. Yet, the coronavirus pandemic is but one of many urgent global health problems. This project will launch a new Workshop on the Politics of Global Health that brings together leading social scientists from the disciplines of anthropology, political science, and sociology – along with practitioners in Boston and around the world – to advance understanding of health phenomena in a globally interconnected world. This monthly workshop will provide a space for the exchange of ideas across disciplines; the bridging of scholarly and practitioner worlds; the training and professionalization of graduate students; and deeper institutionalization of the study of global health politics within the disciplinary social sciences, in the service of addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems. Learn more about the workshop here. |
 Prof. Cathal J. Nolan, HistoryProf. Erik Goldstein, History Faculty Research Fellows (2022-2023) Getting to Peace: Transitioning from War to Peace through Negotiated CompromiseResearch on how peace transitions to war is extensive. Far less is known about how wars transition to peace. The topic is obscured by social science abstraction and by historians assuming uniqueness of time, place, and conflict. To bridge this gulf, the project team will bring together historically-minded social scientists and policy-aware historians who understand that peace is not an abstraction easily modeled, but also that negotiation is not reinvented every time in each new place. They will aim to elucidate how the transition is made from active war to peace talks, identify preconditions that must be met in such transitions, and ask what history teaches about ‘getting to peace’ during the critical endgame to wars. |
 Prof. Carrie Preston, English; Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality StudiesProf. Muhammad H. Zaman, Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research Fellows (2022-2023) Interdisciplinary Research and Practice to Study Longer-Range Impacts of Border Externalization and Forced MigrationThis project seeks to analyze US border externalization and policies designed to prevent migrants from reaching the border and requesting asylum, which triggers international protocols and protections. In particular, the project team seeks to understand the longer-range impacts of these policies on both migrant and host communities, with a focus on youth. This research will show how border externalization, which is proliferating across the globe, puts individuals, families, and entire communities at risk of human rights violations, contributes to extremism and nationalism, and impacts the long-term future of the US political and social landscape, particularly as migration intersects with other challenges of utmost concern: climate change, community health, and racism. |
 Prof. Lucy Hutyra, Earth & EnvironmentProf. Pamela Templer, Biology Faculty Research Fellows (2020-2023) Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition Throughout the Greater Boston AreaThis project established the first urban nitrogen monitoring stations (in the City of Boston) as part of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP). The project team established a new NADP site on the Boston University campus along with several other sampling sites throughout the City of Boston and converted a recently established monitoring site at the Arnold Arboretum to a long-term one. In addition to contributing to the national research program, this new urban monitoring network fits well within a larger biogeochemistry research program at BU, which is seeking to establish a mechanistic understanding of sources and transformations of emissions and deposition of nitrogen within the City of Boston to enable predictions of future atmospheric nitrogen deposition rates. The two urban sites are the first official urban sites in the NADP program and will shed light not only on urban deposition of nitrogen but of many other pollutants as well, including sulfate and phosphate. These two sites serve as a model for the establishment of other urban atmospheric pollution monitoring sites throughout the United States. |
 Prof. Shelley Brown, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation SciencesFaculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) Perinatal Mental Health and Human Development Working GroupThis project sought to synthesize an interdisciplinary understanding of the challenges facing early identification and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders in women who live in low- to middle-income countries, and thus inform global policy change using a health equity lens. Brown conducted a literature review; key informant interviews with leading policy experts and clinicians; and an analysis of in-depth interviews and country-level data. A forthcoming publication will identify key issues impacting global governance of maternal mental health based on qualitative research findings and global comparative analysis of perinatal mental health policies and practices. |
 Richard Samuel Deese, Social Sciences, College of General StudiesMichael Holm, Social Sciences, College of General Studies Faculty Research Fellows (2018-2021) How Democracy Survives: The Crises of the Nation-StateIn October 2020, Richard Samuel Deese and Michael Holm convened a three-day virtual conference titled “How Democracy Survives: The Crises of the Nation-State”. The goal of the conference was to explore new ways to enhance democratic governance on a national, regional, and planetary scale in order to confront social and political challenges such as climate change, mass migrations, pandemics, and resurgent authoritarianism more effectively. Following the conference, Deese and Holm have conducted a series of podcast interviews in conjunction with the BU student publication, The Politica, and they also plan to publish a book of collected essays titled, How Democracy Survives: Global Challenges in the Anthropocene (Routledge 2022). |
 Prof. Michael Dietze, Earth & EnvironmentFaculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) The Ecological Forecasting Initiative: An Interdisciplinary SymposiumNear-term ecological forecasting is an emerging research area focused on accelerating environmental research and making it more relevant to society. Dietze used his Pardee Center seed grant to leverage additional support from the Sloan Foundation to sponsor the Ecological Forecasting Initiative (EFI) conference at AAAS headquarters in Washington, DC, from May 13-15, 2019. This was the first public conference by EFI (ecoforecast.org), an international grassroots consortium that Dietze organized and launched in fall 2018 with the goal of building a community of practice around the new research area of iterative near-term ecological forecasting. Over 100 people of all career stages (from undergraduate to emeritus) were in attendance for the meeting, representing a broad range of academic disciplines, federal agencies, and NGOs. Since the conference, EFI has grown to become an internationally-recognized research consortium with hundreds of registered members. Most of EFI’s work occurs within working group meetings, with nine interdisciplinary working groups that have been meeting monthly since 2019. These working groups have generated a wide range of products, including peer-reviewed papers, in-person and virtual workshops, webinars, panel discussions, and a distributed course. EFI has also organized a steady stream of conference sessions at a range of annual meetings, organized a 200-person virtual conference in 2020, and plans to host large in-person conferences every year or two going forward. Building on the Pardee Center seed funding, EFI has been successful in winning a five-year NSF Research Coordination Network grant. |
 Prof. Robinson W. (Wally) Fulweiler, Biology (jointly with Earth & Environment)Faculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) Synthesizing the Nitrogen Removal Capacity of Oyster AquacultureDenitrification by oysters is a microbial process that removes biologically usable nitrogen, providing a natural filter that can help improve water quality and ecosystem function. For roughly the past decade, researchers have been measuring rates of denitrification associated with oyster aquaculture in different coastal environments with different techniques. The goal of this project was to synthesize this research. In September 2019, Fulweiler convened a two-day workshop bringing together a group of about 30 experts to assess the current state of knowledge on denitrification associated with oyster aquaculture. Following the workshop, participants have published three papers (here, here, and here) in academic journals in an effort to develop a path forward for including nitrogen removal capacity in future nutrient trading schemes. |
 Prof. Lucy Hutyra, Earth & Environment Prof. Pamela Templer, Biology Prof. Dan Li, Earth & Environment Faculty Research Fellows (2018-2021) Mitigation of Boston Heat Island Effect with Urban CanopyThe frequency and duration of extreme heat waves are projected to continue to increase in urban areas throughout the world, leading to higher risks of heat-related deaths. Increasing urban canopy is a key strategy for mitigating excess urban heat by creating a cooling microclimate via shading and evapotranspiration. However, our ability to predict the mitigation effect of urban vegetation is limited by existing approaches that assume urban trees behave like their rural counterparts. Transpiration rates are known to vary by tree species, climatic conditions, and nutrient availability – factors known to vary between urban and rural environments. This project developed new estimates of urban transpiration by: 1) empirically quantifying rates in both urban and nearby rural trees; 2) integrating field estimates of transpiration into the advancement of urban heat island models; and 3) applying the newly improved model to identify and test the efficiency of urban canopy mitigation approaches. Building on the Pardee Center’s seed funding, this project has contributed to five publications, several presentations, the procurement of a $650,000 NSF award from the Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events (PREEVENTS) program in 2019, and built the foundation for a sustained collaboration with the City of Boston in its heat preparedness planning. |
 Prof. Jim Stodder, Administrative Sciences, Metropolitan CollegeFaculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) Forecasts for Carbon Pricing and Energy TransitionThis project aimed to explore new approaches to modeling carbon prices, and to bring together scholars working on economic and climate models to look at energy markets, macroeconomic stability, climate projections, and geopolitics. The first year of the project was spent on an empirical model of carbon taxes or permits. In February 2019, Stodder convened an all-day workshop exploring carbon tax forecasting at the Pardee Center, which was attended by an interdisciplinary group of 15 people, comprised of Boston University faculty, staff, and graduate students, as well as climate change experts and economists from Beijing Normal University, McKinsey & Co., MIT, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Synapse Energy Economics. Ultimately, he will host an international conference on carbon pricing during the 2020-21 academic year. In July 2021, Stodder convened a two-day virtual conference of panels and keynote addresses exploring the future of carbon pricing. The first day, which featured a keynote address by Geoffrey M. Heal (Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia University Business School), focused on economic and technical research on carbon pricing measures. The second day, which featured a keynote address by Matto Mildenberger (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California at Santa Barbara), focused on the social and political implications of our transition to a more sustainable future. |
 Prof. Ana Villarreal, SociologyFaculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) Armored Cities: Drugs, Violence, and Seclusion in Latin AmericaThis project examined a new pattern of urban seclusion emerging in Latin America in response to growing horrific violence. Where private security falls short, the upper class is leveraging state resources to create armored cities or heavily policed cities within metropolitan areas, micro-states within a state. This ethnographic project highlights two factors of global environmental change that are key to the development of urban life in the longer-range future: social inequality and violence linked to the global illicit drug trade. The main purpose of this project was to support the completion of Villarreal’s first book manuscript, The Armored City: Violence and Seclusion in the Mexican Metropolis, to be published by Oxford University Press. She also published two articles related to this work, titled “Reconceptualizing Urban Violence from the Global South” in City & Community and “Domesticating Danger: Coping Codes and Symbolic Security Amidst Violent Organized Crime in Mexico,” in Sociological Theory. |
 Prof. Catherine West, Anthropology and ArchaeologyFaculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) Oceans Past, Present, & Future: Historical Ecology & Circumpolar Fisheries ManagementThe role of the social sciences in northern circumpolar research has surged in recent years as humans grapple with new adaptations to changing climate, landscapes, and resources. In March 2021, this project convened social scientists, resource managers, and climate scientists for a two-day interdisciplinary symposium and workshop on the value of marine historical ecology in circumpolar fisheries management. The first day featured a series of public presentations by resource managers, historical ecologists, and physical and social scientists whose research addresses fishing, climate, and socioeconomic dynamics. On the second day, a workshop built on these presentations with a discussion to chart a course for the future. |
 Prof. Ziming Xuan, School of Public HealthFaculty Research Fellow (2018-2021) The Epidemiological Transition of Alcohol Problems and Policy Issues in China and India: A Tale of Two CountriesAlong with rapid economic growth in China and India in the past several decades, there has been a striking increase in social and health issues related to alcohol use and misuse. Alcohol policies have been shown as an effective population-level driver in reducing alcohol-related morbidity and mortality in developed countries, yet the research evidence in both China and India is lacking. The aim of this project was to establish a multidisciplinary and policy-relevant program of research on the impacts of alcohol policies during the epidemiological transition in both countries. Xuan presented his findings at several international conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Leveraging Pardee Center funding, he has also been awarded a 5-year sub-award with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from the National Cancer Institute to evaluate tobacco intervention in low-resource settings in India, and has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to examine alcohol use and HIV among married couples in India. |
 Prof. Wendy Heiger-Bernays, Environmental Health Prof. David Glick, Political Science Faculty Research Fellows (2016-2019) Integrating Science, Health and Policy to Engineer Global Sustainable Water AccessGlobal sustainable water management efforts are hampered by technological limitations, insufficient health risk assessments, and untenable policy solutions that lack public support. Access to pathogen-free water is a challenge in rapidly urbanized developing nations where underdeveloped infrastructure encourages water stagnation and microorganism growth. Compounding these issues, both industrialized and developing cities suffer water scarcity (an early implication of climate change) and are investigating water resource management solutions such as recycled water, but technological failure of such water reuse systems could lead to drinking water contamination of pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs known in the water supply. The team developed novel materials and processes for the degradation of such potential contaminants in water for household to industrial scale use in developing and industrialized urban areas. Laboratory results informed a risk assessment model to predict the impact the technology would have to reduce human health risk due to exposure to a suite of pharmaceutical compounds. As part of this project, the Pardee Center hosted a public seminar on the group’s research findings to date on October 25, 2017. The team published a paper in Resources Conservation and Recycling and presented a paper at the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in 2019 focused on identifying barriers to water reuse. |
 Richard B. Primack, BiologyFaculty Research Fellow (2016-2019) Addressing Urban Environmental ChallengesMore than half of the world’s population lives in urban environments, and cities will continue to grow faster than rural areas in the coming decades. People in cities face serious environmental threats from air and water pollution, and such threats will increase in the future due to climate change and extreme weather events, most notably heat waves, drought, and sea level rise. Dealing with these threats and changing public policy requires increased communication and cooperation among researchers, government officials, and the general public. An interdisciplinary approach is needed that brings together expertise from the fields of Biogeoscience and Environmental Health with policy makers, the private sector, and the people who live and work in cities. Boston University received a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) grant to train 60 Ph.D. students, 20 of whom will receive NRT stipends, in the areas of Biogeoscience, Environmental health, and Statistics. This project strengthened the BU URBAN program by providing interdisciplinary summer fellowships to graduate students whose research addresses urban environmental challenges including, but not limited to, air and water quality, noise pollution, citizen science, and environmental modeling. |
 Prof. Kevin P. Gallagher, Pardee School of Global StudiesFaculty Research Fellow (2015-2018) Pardee Center Task Force on Trade, Investment, and Climate PolicyThe Pardee Center Task Force on Trade, Investment, and Climate Policy comprised an interdisciplinary group of experts to examine the extent to which proposed trade and investment treaties are compatible with global climate change goals, and articulated a series of policy recommendations that could incorporate progressive climate policy into trade and investment treaties. The Task Force focused on the extent to which the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between the U.S. and India, and the U.S. and China presented opportunities and barriers to advancing progressive climate change policies among the parties. As part of this project, Prof. Gallagher convened an international experts’ workshop titled “Reconciling Trade and Climate Change Policy: Opportunities and Challenges” at the Pardee Center in the spring of 2016, and subsequently synthesized the experts’ findings in a Pardee Center Task Force Report, titled “Trade in the Balance: Reconciling Trade and Climate Policy,” published in electronic format in November 2016. The report emphasized that trade and investment treaties can be instruments to advance the global climate and development agenda, but that the prevailing model of trade and investment treaties is largely incompatible with the world’s broader climate goals. The authors recommended that the model rules for trade and investment treaties need to be redesigned with an overriding principle to reward climate-friendly modes of economic activity, curb activity that worsens climate change, and provide the proper policy space so that nation-states can adequately address the climate challenge. |
 Prof. Sucharita Gopal, Earth & Environment Prof. Les Kaufman, Biology Prof. Bruce Anderson, Earth & Environment Prof. Susan Foster, School of Public Health Faculty Research Fellows (2015-2018) Climate Change and Health Issues in Cambodia and IndiaThis research explored the connections between climate change and human health impacts in India and Cambodia to help inform policies that may be developed to reduce morbidity and mortality. The project included a meta-analysis of the literature from multiple fields that have examined the connections between climate change and disease, and an analysis of monthly temperature extremes in each country over the past 40 years. This work provides an understanding of the frequency and distribution of extreme heat in India over that period. As part of this project, Prof. Gopal gave a lecture titled “Geospatial Technologies for Public Health Research” at Sri Ramaswami Memorial University in Chennai, India, in July 2016. As a result of this talk, Prof. Gopal established connections with in-country scholars to further collaborate on research on the health impacts of climate changes, leading to better informed policy decisions in the areas of public health and related fields. In addition, Profs. Gopal, Anderson, and Foster participated in a Pardee Center seminar titled “Public Health Impacts of Climate Change in India” in April 2016. |
 Prof. Joseph Harris, SociologyFaculty Research Fellow (2015-2018) First Symposium on Global Health and the Social Sciences (Fall 2017)The project convened the First Symposium on Global Health and the Social Sciences, bringing together anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists working on global health from around the nation and world. The two-day gathering took place November 9-10, 2017 and was intended to expose participants to colleagues from other disciplines, to new ideas, and to provide the opportunity for scholars to create new research pathways and chart new agendas in conference sessions with both disciplinary and interdisciplinary themes. The symposium resulted in a report published by the Pardee Center in June 2018. |
 Prof. Ian Sue Wing, Earth & EnvironmentFaculty Research Fellow (2015-2018) Sustainable Energy Transitions ResearchProf. Ian Sue Wing assisted the Pardee Center in pursuing collaborative research partnerships on sustainable energy transitions. In particular, he hosted Bas van Ruijven, a Project Scientist II with the Integrated Assessment Modeling group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), for a six-month appointment from January to July 2016 at the Pardee Center to research climate change impacts on household energy use and on energy transitions in developing countries. The collaboration resulted in a major study published in Nature Communications in June 2019, which demonstrated that, by mid-century, climate change will significantly increase the demand for energy, driven in large part by electricity needed for cooling. |
 Prof. Min Ye, Pardee School of Global StudiesFaculty Research Fellow (2015-2018) China’s Silk Road Diplomacy: Studying and Shaping China’s Long-Term Economic Footprints in Asia and BeyondThe aim of this project was to establish a coordinated, multidisciplinary, policy-relevant program of research on the impacts of various aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in other developing countries in Asia and elsewhere. Prof. Ye investigated the bureaucratic sources of the BRI in Beijing and localized implementation of the BRI by Chinese commercial actors. The research provided important knowledge on China’s elite politics governing the country’s globalization and first-hand discovery of how local governments and companies influence national policies. Together, Prof. Ye’s research explained how China rises in the world economy through market globalization, and how the economic process strengthens political autocracy in the nation. The effort included fieldwork in China, annual events, and the development of sustainable networks of scholars and practitioners who collectively identified important issues and policy-relevant insights related to China’s BRI. In 2017, Prof. Ye convened two Pardee Center forums titled “China’s Global Future and the Future of the Globe: How the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is Quietly Changing China and Surrounding Countries” and “Economic Expansions, Past and Present: How America’s Experience Connects to Modern-Day China.” |
Faculty Associates
Pardee Center Faculty Associates are affiliated with the Center through their interests in interdisciplinary scholarship and longer-range perspectives on issues related to improving the human condition. Faculty Associates participate in Pardee Center events and programs, and serve as resources for the Center in its outreach and programmatic activities. Faculty Research Fellows maintain an affiliation with the Pardee Center as Faculty Associates at the conclusion of their projects.
