Social Science Research Council

From September 8-13, the GSC Program hosted representatives of the teams receiving the 2002 Grants for Research Collaboration in Conflict Zones. Formally beginning their tenures, the eight participants hailed from Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia and Sudan. All six GSC staff were in attendance and the SSRC New York office was represented by Program Directors Elizabeth Counsens and Ron Kassimir.

Washington was chosen as the meeting site primarily because of the wealth of resources (e.g., universities, research libraries, think-tanks and important international organizations) available here. The agenda, designed to take advantage of this fact, was truly diverse. The key part of the program was a series of formal presentations from the Grantees, who discussed various aspects of their teams’ research projects, paying particular attention to each project’s methodological design. The Grantees benefited from feedback received from their fellow colleagues as well as the SSRC staff. This sharing of information amongst researchers and practitioners from diverse regions and backgrounds has always been pivotal to the GSC.

The rest of the week was filled with a number of other learning and networking opportunities. The opening dinner featured GSC Program Director Itty Abraham who gave a presentation on his exciting project “Beyond Borders: (Il)licit Flows of People, Objects, and Ideas,” run also under the auspices of the GSC Program. During their one-week stay in Washington, the Grantees had a rare opportunity to network with local scholars and activists with similar professional interests through a series of one-on-one meetings at institutions such as USIP, Brookings, World Bank, and USAID. Several Grantees participated in a one-day conference entitled “More than Victims: The Role of Women in Conflict Prevention.” The event was cosponsored by the Conflict Prevention, Middle East and Environmental Change and Security Projects of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and by Women Waging Peace. Additionally, the Grantees devoted time to individual research, taking advantage of libraries at the American University and the United States Institute of Peace. They also paid a visit to the Holocaust Museum and attended a congressional briefing by Jonah Blank of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As the meeting coincided with the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the domestic and international impact of the attacks and the subsequent US-led “war on terrorism” were raised in many discussions during the week. Most notably so during the Roundtable on the “War on Terrorism” on September 12, which was held as part of an ongoing series at the SSRC Washington office. The GSC has engaged this theme frequently and the event provided fascinating accounts of how the life and work of each Grantee have changed as a result of the terrorist attacks in the USA.

The meeting succeeded in providing a forum for lively intellectual discussions, and in widening the existing GSC research and professional network. The Grantees are scheduled to complete their research projects and to report on their research findings by May 2003.