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Five Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me in Graduate School: Summing Up
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Bridging the Gap
Bridging the Gap promotes scholarly contributions to public debate and decision making on global challenges and U.S. foreign policy. BtG equips professors and doctoral students with the skills they need to produce influential policy-relevant research and theoretically grounded policy work. They also spearhead cutting-edge research on problems of concrete importance to governments, think tanks, international institutions, non-governmental organizations, and global firms. Within the academy, BtG is driving changes in university culture and processes designed to incentivize public and policy engagement.
Recent Posts
Five Things I Wish Someone had Told me in Grad School: Building a nurturing community
Grad students who weren’t schooled at elite universities face real challenges in a squeezed academic job market. But many talented grad students do reach tenure when they receive the same support and guidance offered in elite universities.
Five Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me in Graduate School: Navigating the Choppy Seas
Mostly, I muddled through grad school, but with the support of my cohort and guidance from a few choice people, I was able to navigate my way through the uncertainty of graduate school.
5 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me in Graduate School: Balancing Work and Family
When thinking about what things I most wish someone had told me in graduate school… I found it difficult to not write about work-life balance, particularly today.
5 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me in Grad School: A Smorgasbord
In a recent panel organized by Ashley Leeds and the Women in Conflict Studies (WICS) group, I had a chance to reflect on some things I wish someone had told me while I was getting my Ph.D. The Bridging the Gap project got excited about bringing the panelists’ reflections to a larger audience through a week of posts here at the Duck of Minerva blog. I’ll start off with various thoughts, and fellow participants will explore their own themes throughout the week. Maybe you’re fortunate to have lots of mentors and get consistently great advice. Even so – and even if you’re past grad...
A Piece of the Puzzle: The Relative Importance and Unimportance of Academic Contributions to the Policy Process
Academic research can go a long way to shape the debate or can have no effect at all. The problem is that scholars don’t know – and may never know – how their work has been received by policymakers and whether it steered a policy decision in a good or bad direction.
Elite Experiments: Strengthening Scholarship while Bridging the Gap
For decades, many International Relations (IR) scholars portrayed experiments with foreign policy elites as too risky, too costly, or too difficult to implement. Faculty mentors discouraged graduate students from wasting their time. In a new article in European Journal of International Relations, we argue that elite experiments are not as difficult to implement as many believe they are. However, they do require careful planning in order to get elites on board. When are elite experiments worth the costs? What are some tips and tricks for successfully carrying out this method? How might this...
Bridging the Other Gap: Approaches for Blending STEM and Social Science Education
The COVID-19 pandemic makes it clear – our students need a blend of science and policy literacy. Transnational challenges with technical dimensions are increasingly common. Pandemic disease, climate change, artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, and other issues touching our politics and society demand fluencies that no single academic department houses. So, how might educators prepare students for this complex world? Scholars in the mid-20th century recognized interdisciplinary needs in harnessing nuclear weapons. A few decades later, others did the same to address environmental issues....
Introducing Bridging the Gap’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow: Emmanuel Balogun
The Bridging the Gap team is thrilled to announce the addition of a new member of our leadership team: Emmanuel Balogun, the inaugural BtG Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow. We recently sat down with him to ask about his work, hobbies, and plans for the fellowship. Welcome to the team, Emmanuel! BTG: Tell us a bit about yourself. What drives your scholarship? EB: What drives my scholarship is my desire to highlight the multitude of ways African countries engage with the international community. I am also very curious about the role of African expertise in IR. My research on African...
Writing a Dissertation isn’t Running a Marathon… it’s Training for One
Hilary Matfess is a PhD candidate at Yale University, an incoming professor at the University of Denver’s Korbel School, and a 2020-2021 United States Institute for Peace (USIP) Peace Scholar Fellow. She will participate in the Bridging the Gap NEW Era workshop in 2021. Her work has been published in International Security, Security Studies, Stability, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and African Studies Review. Her first book, Women and the War on Boko Haram, was published in 2017 with Zed Publishers. Relevant to this article, she has also completed several marathons and looks forward to...