Program

From 2006 to 2016, with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the China Environment and Health Initiative (CEHI) explored the threats to health arising from China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization, and the challenges they present for governance. The program took an interdisciplinary approach that fostered collaboration among researchers from the social, medical, and environmental sciences. In 2008, the SSRC joined with several Chinese research institutions to form the Forum on Health, Environment and Development (FORHEAD), which continues to pursue this agenda. For more information about current activities, see www.forhead.org. Former CEHI program director Jennifer Holdaway is now a senior research fellow at the …

With support from the Ford Foundation, the SSRC’s Vietnam Program partnered with what was then the Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City (now the Southern Institute of Sustainable Development) to study the social consequences of Vietnam’s shift to a market economy–in particular, migration flows to Ho Chi Minh City. We conducted a longitudinal study in several sites within and outside the city, while also holding methodology workshops and technical training seminars for over thirty Vietnamese researchers. Our findings appear in Urbanization, Migration and Poverty in a Vietnamese Metropolis: Ho Chi Minh City in Comparative Perspectives, edited by Hy Van Luong of the …

Since its founding in the mid-1980s, the Vietnam Program has worked to strengthen social science research capacity in Vietnam, its wide-ranging projects embodying the SSRC’s commitment to supporting innovative social science research and mobilizing knowledge on issues of pressing public concern. In collaboration with partners both inside and outside of Vietnam, the Vietnam Program has led studies and strategic assessments to advance evidence-based policy decisions on issues relating to poverty, urbanization, migration, health, youth, and social change; awarded over a hundred grants and fellowships for Vietnam-related research projects; organized dozens of academic seminars and other exchanges of information with our …

The Council has a long history of applying qualitative and quantitative social science methods to examine the conditions under which interventions by foundations, governments, and multilateral organizations are, or are not, successful and extracting and applying lessons from both successes and failures. Our distinctive 360-degree approach to learning and assessment for the purposes of improvement holds two ideas as central.

The Social Science Research Council was awarded a grant to develop and coordinate a learning partnership to support the Mastercard Foundation’s Scholars Program. The Scholars Program supports secondary and tertiary education for African scholars through partnering with educational institutions in Africa and globally. The program is based on the conviction that education is a catalyst for social and economic change. As the Learning Partnership Facilitator, the Council helps institutions that are part of the Scholars Program strengthen their monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) functions and facilitates learning and using evidence for program improvement across the Scholars Program. The Council …

The Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project supports efforts to form a cooperative security community in Northeast Asia. Begun in 1995, the project has conducted several Track II diplomatic initiatives, bringing together representatives from North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia who are interested in working in an unofficial capacity to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. The project also aims to educate publics in both the United States and Northeast Asia through lectures, publications, and mainstream media appearances.