ISS fellowships free some of Cornell’s top social scientists to pursue research

The Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) at Cornell will sponsor 12 of the university’s most promising social scientists for one semester, enabling them to pursue their research, free from teaching and most departmental duties.

ISS Faculty Fellows are provided with an office in Ives Hall East and a $10,000 research grant. They will move into their offices in either fall 2012 or spring 2013.

The fellowship program is intended to nurture promising young faculty members in the social sciences. It is designed to support assistant professors during the two to three years prior to their tenure review and associate professors just prior to review for promotion to full professor. The program also aims to promote intellectual exchange and interdisciplinary scholarship.

"The Faculty Fellows program provides an opportunity for faculty members to have a quiet, collegial space in which to research and write, along with concentrated time away from other responsibilities that so often make it hard to keep up with their research," said Kenneth M. Roberts, the Robert S. Harrison Director of the ISS. "The program is also a great way for faculty to connect with colleagues in other social science departments and learn from a diverse set of disciplinary perspectives."

This is the second cohort of ISS faculty fellows, and they represent the wide range of the social sciences at Cornell. The first was chosen in 2008. A search for a third group is scheduled for fall 2013.

The new fellows, their departments, research projects and fellowship period are:

• Daniel Benjamin, economics, "Understanding and Developing Survey-Based Measures of Well-Being," spring 2013;
• Antonio Bento, applied economics and management, "On the Costs of Climate Mitigation: A Federal Clean Energy Standard With State-Level Distributional Constraints," fall 2012;
• Benjamin Cornwell, sociology, "Social Networks Dynamics and Health in Later Life," spring 2013;
• Dan Cosley, information science, "Identifying, Modeling and Visualizing Disclosure of Personal Information in Social Media," spring 2013;
• Raymond Craib, history, "The Death of the Firecracker Poet: The Politics of Subversion in Early 20th-Century Santiago, Chile," fall 2012;
• Saida Hodzic, anthropology, "Of Rebels, Spirits and Social Engineers: The Awkward Endings of Female Genital Cutting," fall 2012;
• Lee Humphreys, communication, "Privacy and Social Media: Dialects of Personal Information Sharing Online," fall 2012;
• Tamar Kushnir, human development, "Developing a Concept of Choice," fall 2012;
• Karel Mertens, economics, "Escaping the Liquidity Trap," fall 2012;
• Tom Pepinsky, government, "Politics, Economics and Religion in Indonesia," fall 2012;
• Brian Rubineau, industrial and labor relations, "Gendered Peer Effects in Engineering," fall 2012; and
• Kim Weeden, sociology, "Social Mobility and Immobility in an Age of Inequality," fall 2012.