What happens when a research subject becomes a research and briefing partner? In 2017, I was contacted by the peacebuilding NGO Peace Direct to contribute to a policy report on community-based atrocities prevention. I invited a local peacebuilder I knew from...
Photo courtesy of the Negative Psychologist. When sharing unpopular findings, what obligations (if any) do scholars have when policymakers do not care to hear the message? This is a guest post...
Photo courtesy of the Guardian UK. When engaging with policy audiences and organizations, how can one be truthful when telling the whole truth may be counterproductive? This post is part of an...
This post was written by Marie Berry and Milli Lake, co-founders and principal investigators of the Women’s Rights After War Project. Dr. Berry is Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of...
Editor's Note: This is a guest blog by Jarrod Hayes, who is is an assistant professor of International Relations at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research broadly focuses on the social construction of foreign and security policy. It deals with the International Policy Summer Institute, which has also received coverage at The Monkey Cage. I have had the great pleasure and honor to attend the Bridging the Gap/International Policy Summer Institute hosted by (the very impressive) American University School of International Service. The experience has been a rich one, with an amazing...
e-International Relations asked me to write a piece about doing policy-relevant research. I thought I'd cross-post it here, especially timely given recent posts on this blog along with Ronald Rogowski's screed that our work is too policy-relevant but policymakers just don't want to hear what we are saying (HT: The Monkey Cage). Here is the full post: During graduate school, the community of up and coming scholars who wanted to do policy-relevant research seemed a bit like Fight Club. It was something each of us secretly wanted to pursue but were reluctant to talk about in public. We found...
I have read with great interest over the last few days posts by Jeffrey Stacey and now Sean Kay on the gap between scholarship and policy. I agree with much of what they said - seriously - and I want to raise a more positive spin on some of these issues. I the gap between policy and scholarship in Washington DC as *mildly* improving when it comes to political science, at least from the political science side of the question. This is not to say things are perfect. Far from it. But rather than thinking about political science in general, and international relations in particular, as a "cult of...
As it turns out, there are a group of scholars working to bridge this divide. Check out the Bridging the Gap Project. The project has programs for new and not-so-new scholars in the US and abroad. This seems to be exactly what we need.  Take a look and consider applying (soon since the Dec 5 deadline is upon us).
I just returned from a week long program at American University called Bridging the Gap: the International Policy Summer Institute (IPSI). Organized by the new Dean of AU's School of International Service Jim Goldgeier, Duke's Bruce Jentleson, Berkeley's Steve Weber, and Smith College's Brent Durbin, this was the faculty complement to the New Era program for graduate students that initially started at Berkeley several years ago by Steve, Brent, Ely Ratner, and Naazneen Barma.For those who haven't had a chance to participate in either program, I highly recommend them both. While the New Era...
Among the assigned readings for my new doctoral seminar in Human Security this week are a number of pieces from last year's International Studies Review Theory v. Practice Symposium. There are numerous fascinating pieces here, including Dan Drezner's case study on the evolution of "smart sanctions," Roland Paris' discussion of "fragile states" as a case study in epistemic agenda-setting, and Kittikhoun and Weiss' debunking "The Myth of Scholarly Irrelevance for the U.N."In particular, a quote from Jentleson and Ratner's contribution jumped out at me:"The profession-based incentive structure...