CAPS Research Seed Grants are available
quickly
and with a minimum of red tape.
At any stage of graduate work, students in Government, Sociology,
Economics, History, and other social science Ph.D. programs may
apply simply by submitting an email to caps@gov.harvard.edu.
The email should briefly describe your project - which must deal
with some aspect of modern American politics - and give a budget
detailing the research-related expenses for which you need support.
Your email application will be circulated to a small committee of
CAPS faculty, and a decision will be made quickly, usually within
a matter of days.
Seed grants are administered by Lilia
Halpern-Smith, CAPS Program Administrator. Her office is in Room
N429 of the CGIS Knafel Building at 1737 Cambridge Street. She can
be reached by email at
lhalpern@gov.harvard.edu
and by phone at 617-495-2724. You will be responsible for
documenting expenses under your grant. In addition, Seed Grant
recipients will have opportunities to present research in progress
and post descriptions of their projects on the CAPS website.
2005-06 Seed Grant Recipients
Emily Abrams (Historical Musicology)
For travel to Chicago to present paper titled, “Cold War
Copland: Television and Cultural Propaganda” at the Annual
Conference of the Society for American Music. Dissertation is on the
music program of the United States Information Agency during the
Cold War years.
Sam Abrams (Government)
To purchase data from Election Data Services, Inc., with
county-level tabulations of returns and voter participation statistics
from the 2004 US election, including estimated voting age population (VAP)
and county-level tabulations of voter registration and voter turnout. To
investigate whether places with higher social mobility will have lower
rates of political participation as people are less embedded within
particular social communities.
Marcus Alexander (Government) and Fotini
Christia (Government)
To pay for incentives and miscellaneous research expenses for a
research project which will study how ethnic diversity and institutions
of integration interact to affect citizen’s willingness to contribute
money to a public good.
Andreea Balan (Economics)
For data collection and data entry expenses for dissertation tracing
effects of the Old Age Assistance Program (OAA) on elderly welfare in
the United States between 1930 and 1955.
Traci Burch (Government & Social Policy)
To purchase data for her dissertation. The quantitative portion of her
project examines voter registration and turnout of current and former
felons in an effort to figure out the impacts of disadvantage and felon
disenfranchisement on felon participation.
Asif Efrat (Government)
Travel to Washington, DC to research American policy in three areas
of illegal international trafficking: small arms, human trafficking,
drugs. For dissertation on international cooperation against illegal
trafficking, i.e., why and how states cooperate in the fight against
various kinds of illegal trade.
Cybelle Fox (Sociology & Social Policy)
For travel to Los Angeles and Berkeley, CA to do archival work
related to her dissertation which brings together the literatures of
Chicano studies, immigration, and welfare states to examine the ways in
which Latino-Anglo and immigrant-native relations have shaped the
politics of welfare in the United States.
Tammy Frisby (Government)
For data entry expenses to compile database of election data from
state House races in both term limit and a sample of non-term-limit
states during the last 15 years. For dissertation on the impact of state
legislative term limits on electoral competition for state legislative
seats
Scott Gelber (History of American
Civilization)
For travel and research expenses to do archival research at the
University of Nebraska for dissertation titled, “Plain Talks on Plain
Subjects: Academic Populism & Public Higher Education, 1870-1900,”
examining the impact of the Populist movement on state colleges and
universities in the United States.
Luisa Heredia (Sociology)
For travel expenses and recording equipment to do archival and field
research in California for dissertation on political mobilization and
incorporation of Latinos there in the 1990s.
Daniel Hopkins (Government)
For travel to Louisiana, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to study
the impact of community assignment on the evacuees. For dissertation on
the impact of ethnic/racial diversity on local public investment.
Doug Kriner (Government)
1) To purchase National Archives’ data sets of U.S. military records
from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam and data from the Roper Center of the
Social Capital Benchmark Survey. Collaborating with Government graduate
student Francis Shen, Doug is examining multiple aspects of American
combat casualties: inequalities in their distribution across society,
the effect of local level casualties on public opinion and electoral
outcomes, and the continuing consequences of these inequalities for
levels of trust in government and patterns of civic engagement.
2) Also received funding for conference
travel to present a paper with Will Howell at Oxford at the Conference
on the American Presidency, May 24-28, 2006.
Byron Miller (Government & Social Policy)
For travel and tuition to attend the Summer Institute on
International Migration, Ethnic Diversity, and Cities in June 2006 at
the Universiteit van Amsterdam’s Institute for Migration and Ethnic
Studies.
Sabrina Pendergrass (Sociology)
To cover expenses related to data analysis for her paper
“Negotiating Race, Narrating Nation: The Meaning of American Identity
among African American Men.”
Daniel Schlozman (Government & Social
Policy)
To hire an undergraduate research assistant to enter data for a
project looking at giving patterns of U.S. philanthropic foundations
alongside foundation trustees’ individual contributions to federal
election campaigns.
Liam Schwartz (Government)
For travel to do dissertation research at the National Archives.
Gathered primary source material on several Civil War era select
committees, principally those on loyalty, government contracting, the
conduct of the war, and reconstruction.
Gilles Serra (Political Economy &
Government)
To present paper titled, “Effects of Primary Elections on Candidate
Strategies and Policy Outcomes,” at Midwest Political Science
Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
Jennifer Sykes (Sociology & Social Policy)
To defray recording and transcription costs associated with her
research on child maltreatment.
Benjamin Waterhouse (History)
For travel and research expenses to do archival research for
dissertation titled, “Corporate Leaders and the Pro-Business Agenda in
Modern Politics,” analyzing the roles played by elite business leaders
in shaping both policy and public attitudes toward business and
government during the 1970s and 1980s
2004-5 Seed Grant
Recipients
Samuel Jeremy Abrams, Government
To
defray travel, tuition and living expenses in order to attend the
2005 Summer Institute in Political Psychology at Stanford University,
a three-week intensive training program that introduces graduate
students, faculty members, and professionals to the world of political
psychology scholarship.
Fiona Barker, Government (with
Hillel Soifer, Government)
Organized April 15-16, 2005 conference at Harvard on "Process-Tracing
in Qualitative Research: Nuts and Bolts." Used CAPS seed
grant to reimburse conference speakers' travel expenses.
Lydia Bean, Sociology
This
past summer, Lydia traveled to a medium-sized Texas city to interview
for her dissertation "Moral Boundaries In Local Governance,"
40 street-level bureaucrats. She used the money to transcribe the
interviews.
Lauren Brown, History
Traveled to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to
examine the papers of arts consultant and advocate, W. McNeil Lowry,
of the Ford Foundations Program in the Humanities and the Arts (1953-1975),
for her dissertation researching the correlation of the growth of
ballet in America with the international rise of communism and the
Cold War.
Angus Burgin, History
Traveled to
Stanford to perform research in the Friedrich Hayek Papers and the
Mont Pelerin Society Records in the archives of the Hoover Institution.
Tonya Marie Cropper, Ph.D. Program in Public Policy
To
collect data on capital trials including copies of juror questionnaires
and voir dire proceedings transcripts in Atlanta, Georgia to examine
the effect that race, in combination with other juror and case specific
characteristics, has on capital jury selection.
Tammy
Frisby, Government
To purchase Capitol Advantage data sets for research on legislative
politics.
Daniel Jacob Hopkins, Government
Purchased
confidential Geocodes from the General Social Survey to compare
the attitudes towards poverty of people who live around urban
poverty with those of people who live around rural poverty.
Michael Kimmage, History of American Civilization
Used
money for travel costs to conduct interviews related to dissertation,
"The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers
and the Lessons of Anti-Stalinism."
Casey Klofstad, Government
Used
money for travel costs to present at the Conference on Civic Education
Research, held in Reno, NV from September 26-28, 2004.
Sonia Lee, History
For
travel and photocopy expenses incurred researching the effect of
the civil rights movement on Puerto Rican racial identity in New
York City in the 1950s-1970s at the archives of the Library of Congress
(DC), Hunter College, NYPL's Schomburg Library, NYC Municipal Archives,
and Columbia University.
Bikila Ochoa, Sociology and Social Policy
Received
a CAPS Seed grant in support of his dissertation research on how
the policies of a state-funded organization function to facilitate
the reintegration process of juvenile offenders. He used the money
to transcribe interviews he conducted.
Melanie Penny, Sociology and Social
Policy
Purchased digital recorder, microphone, headset, and voice-to-print
software to record and transcribe interviews of residents of various
Boston neighborhoods to investigate the influence that normative
perceptions of neighborhoods have on a community's ability to become
socially organized.
Aziz Rana, Government
Will use grant during summer 2005 for photocopying and travel/phone
expenses to confer with various legal and historical authorities
for dissertation on "Empire and Utopia in American Political
Identity."
Shanna Rose, Political Economy and Government
Used
her CAPS seed grant to travel to Annual APSA conference to present
a chapter of her dissertation. The title of her talk was "Executive
Budget Power and Public Spending in the American States."
Hillel Soifer, Government (with Fiona Barker, Government)
Organized April 15-16, 2005 conference at Harvard on "Process-Tracing
in Qualitative Research: Nuts and Bolts." Used CAPS seed
grant to reimburse conference speakers' travel expenses.
Allison Brownell Tirres, History
Traveled
to El Paso, Texas, to conduct further research for her dissertation,
entitled "American Law Comes to the Border: Legal Consciousness
on the Edge of the U.S.-Mexico Divide, 1848-1890."
2003-4
Graduate Student Seed Grants
Samuel
Abrams, Government
For travel and lodging expenses at the Midwest Political Science
Association annual meeting in Chicago, where he presented his research
analyzing the relationship between direct democracy and levels of
state spending and taxes.
Peter
Benson, Social Anthropology
To
conduct ethnographic research in Granville County, North Carolina,
related to his dissertation which examines how senses of citizenship
are being transformed among tobacco farm families in the North Carolina
piedmont, given the ongoing social processes that have rendered
their livelihood economically difficult and ethically suspect.
Matthew
Briones, History of American Civilization
For
travel to University of Pennsylvania, to study the papers of Dorothy
Swain Thomas and to UCLA to study the Charles Kikuchi papers.
His purpose in examining these papers is to understand the how racial
and ethnic groups mobilized and allied with one another politically,
socially, and culturally in the wartime and immediate postwar eras.
Michael
Fortner, Government
To
help defray travel costs to the Consortium on Qualitative Research
Methods held at Arizona State University this winter. At the
conference, Michael learned about important developments in qualitative
methodology and also received feedback on his dissertation project
that examines minority incorporation in New York and London over
the course of the twentieth century.
Yvonne
Aime Gastelum, Government
For travel to Corpus Christi, Texas for the Southwestern Political
Science Association annual meeting, where she presented her paper,
"Perspectives of Justice: Incorporating Border Institutions
into Theories of Justice."
Daniel
Ho, Government
To explore the effects of ballot ordering on election outcomes.
Examining California statewide elections from 1975 to 1990, Ho seeks
to answer the question whether being on top of the ballot boosts
candidates' electoral fortunes. The seed grant helped cover
the costs of traveling to the California State Archives in Sacramento
and the coding of election materials.
Tomas
Jimenez, Sociology
For travel expenses to attend the "Building the New American
Community" Conference, where he learned more about immigrant
incorporation.
Michael
Kang, Government
For travel expenses to the Midwest Political Science Association
annual meeting to present his paper, "The Hydraulics of Party
Regulation."
June
Kim, Sociology
To transcribe interviews examining the political identity, mobilization,
and participation of South Asians in the post-9/11 era.
Casey
Klofstad, Government
To study the effects of social networks on civic engagement.
Specifically, he is surveying freshmen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
at the beginning and the end of the school year to examine what
impact the "dormitory social setting" had on their civic
participation rates.
Sonia
Lee, Sociology
To pay for her research on her dissertation which explores the struggle
for racial equality by focusing on the interactions between African
Americans and Puerto Ricans. Lee traveled to New York City
and Ithaca in order to access the archives at Centro, Center of
Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College and the labor archives at the
Industrial and Labor Relations Center, Cornell University.
Tao
Li, Government
For travel and lodging expenses incurred at the Public Choice Conference,
where he presented his formal model entitled the messenger game.
The messenger game seeks to explain the strategic transmission of
information in American politics.
Helen
B. Marrow, Sociology
To help with the cost of transcribing over 120 in-depth interviews
with immigrant and native leaders that she conducted in two rural
counties in North Carolina. From her interviews, she hopes
to gain a better understanding of the rural immigrant experience
across several spheres of life -- economic, socio-cultural, and
political.
Suleiman
Osman, History of American Civilization
For travel to the Society for American City and Regional Planning
History Conference in St. Louis to present his paper on gentrification
in Brooklyn from 1950 to 1980.
Andrew
Reeves, Government
To attend a short course offered by Edward Tufte on data and information
presentation.
Monica
Singhal, Economics
To hire an undergraduate research assistant to help collect data
on state appropriations for tobacco control programs. She
is interested in studying the effects of special interest groups
on the allocation of public funds.
Alexander
Wagner, Government
For travel expenses to Chicago to conduct research and interview
representatives of the Chicago Climate Exchange, CCX. The
CCX represents the first voluntary, legally-binding commitment by
a cross-section of North American corporations, municipalities and
other institutions to create a rules-based market for reducing greenhouse
gases.
Benjamin
C. Waterhouse, History
For travel expenses to the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware
to research the papers of Charles McCoy, one of the early members
of the Business Roundtable. He is investigating the formation
of the Business Roundtable and its early forays into business lobbying.
Thad
Williamson, Government
To present a paper titled "Sprawl, Politics, and Participation:
A Disaggregated Approach" at the Annual Conference of the Urban
Affairs Association in Washington, DC on April 1-3, 2004.
2002-3 Graduate
Student Seed Grant Recipients
Matthew Briones, History of American Civilization
For research on dissertation examining
the historical and literary intersections between African Americans
and Asian Americans, from 1941 to 1955.
Lauren Brown,
History
To acquaint herself with the scope of collections housed at the
New York Public Library in preparation for intensive research this
summer. Her project is "From Balanchine to Baryshnikov:
Importing a Russian Aesthetic to American Culture, 1933-1989."
Ethan Bueno de
Mesquita, Government
Attended the International Studies Association meeting to present
a part of his dissertation entitled "An Adverse Selection Model
of Terrorism: Theory and Evidence." The project involves
a formal model and case studies having to do with the politics underlying
government reactions to terrorism.
Traci Burch, Government
Purchase of a data set from Zogby International, which was a
nation-wide survey of Muslim Americans completed before 9/11/01.
This enabled her to study changes in Muslim American group consciousness
caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath.
Seema Jayachandran,
Economics
Traveled to the Midwest Political Science Association meeting
in Chicago, IL from April 3-6, 2003 to present a paper.
Yonatan Eyal,
History
To do dissertation research at the Library of Congress in Washington,
DC. His dissertation examines the early development of the
Democratic party, and the way its policy stances and overall identity
shifted on the eve of the Civil War.
Kristin Goss,
Government
Trip from Washington, DC to discuss dissertation research on
the gun control movement with her thesis committee.
Rieko Kage, Government
Research trip to National Archives in Baltimore to research
dissertation topic on "The Effects of U.S. Occupation on Japanese
Civic Engagement." A fuller exploration of the effects
of the U.S. occupation required research at the U.S. National Archives,
which houses the records of the U.S. occupation.
Michael Kang,
Government
For travel-related expenses associated with his participation
in the Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality, to be held in Berlin
August 12-21. The Institute has a special focus this year
on legal decision making.
Andrew Reeves,
Government
To cover the cost of retrieving information from Vanderbilt
university from "The Cost of Democracy" (1960) by Alexander
Heard, which is helpful in his research on political consultants.
David Singer,
Government
Research trip to Washington, DC to conduct research on dissertation
entitled "Capital Rules: The Domestic Politics of International
Regulatory Harmonization." Trip details included conducting
interviews at the SEC.
Vesla Weaver,
Government
Traveled to the 34th Annual Meeting of the National Conference
of Black Political Scientists in Oakland, California from March
12-15, 2003 to present two papers. The conference theme was
"Human Rights, Terrorism, and Black Politics."
