Expanding Law and Social Science Research by International Research Collaboration

Law And Society Association, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

General Summary This project supports the work of groups of law and social science researchers organized to carry out research on the relationship between law and society with a global reach. The objective is to strengthen law and social science scholarship generally and especially that of U.S. scholars by connecting them with theoretical, methodological, and policy discussions taking place among law and social science researchers in other parts of the world. Transnational problems, such as terrorism, human trafficking, pandemics, immigration, international finance and trade, gender inequality, and natural resource governance, require responses that take into account the legal institutions and practices of many different countries. Cross-disciplinary and cross-national teams will advance science and help diversify the scientific workforce by bringing wider perspectives to the problems they address. By facilitating international exchange in the area of socio-legal research, US scholars can expand their own perspectives, which will also help their work on domestic US problems. US scholars can also, in partnership with their peers in other countries, make greater contributions to public policy and practice on a global scale. Nation-states in war-torn or less affluent regions of the world may be better able to find their own solutions as well as to cooperate more effectively with external aid agencies and foreign governments when their own scholars are well equipped to advise policy-makers, and when the governments can draw upon international scholarly networks for their own institution building. Technical Summary This project supports the work of cross-national and cross-disciplinary International Research Collaboratives (IRCs), research groups that incorporate global perspectives on important law and social science problems. The research groups will meet at a joint international conference in Mexico City in 2017 of the Law and Society Association and the Research Committee on the Sociology of Law. The grant funds are used to enable scholars from low and middle income countries to participate in the research activities of the IRCs. The IRC model builds on past research collaborations supported by the National Science Foundation, collaborations that have produced many important theoretical and applied discoveries. The objective of the collaboratives is to strengthen law and social science scholarship of U.S. scholars by connecting them with theoretical, methodological, and policy discussions taking place among law and social science researchers in other parts of the world. Transnational problems, such as terrorism, human trafficking, pandemics, immigration, international finance and trade, gender inequality, and natural resource governance, require responses that take into account the legal institutions and practices of many different countries. The cross-disciplinary and cross-national teams will bring wider theoretical perspectives to the problems they address. The IRCs generate new knowledge about the most effective research methods for analyzing global law and social science phenomena.