Social Science Research Council

The Social Science Research Council introduced a round of competition on Collaborative Action Research which extended a call-for-proposals to qualified teams (such as scholars, NGO professionals, journalists, and lawyers) who reside or work in places beset by violent conflicts directly tied to issues of globalization. Grants awarded through this medium sought to create a global network of researchers—with a focus on globalization and conflict—pursuing conflict analysis by using a variety of empirical and theoretical methods.

Past requests-for-proposals invited collaborative research on the relationships between processes of political and economic globalization and violent conflict, with a specific focus on natural resources and state capacities.

Team activities contribute to the generation and exchange of new knowledge and data and a critical analysis or evaluation of the practices, policies, and politics of actors involved in the conflicts. These could include, for example, international financial institutions and other international organizations; governments of the major industrialized countries; multinational corporations and private enterprises; private armies and militias; local and national government officials and institutions.

While the principal activities under this grant were to enhance understanding of the causes of conflict, the research teams could present strategies for conflict resolution in the pertinent regions being studied, if appropriate, as well as policy recommendations designed to address sources of insecurity in their region.

Research collaboration—involving, for example, comparative analyses or collaborative data collection—could be facilitated by activities such as workshops, networks, and other forms of intellectual exchange. While theoretical insights and theory building were welcome, they had to be based on empirical research. The hope was that funded activities would lead to the production of tangible outputs such as jointly authored articles for academic and policy/practitioner audiences, research reports, edited volumes, listserves, Web sites, or symposia for the public dissemination of research findings.

There are currently no call-for-proposals at this time.