Grant
Awards
The Pearson Institute Research and Innovation Fund
Each year, The Pearson Institute’s Research and Innovation Fund provides grants to University of Chicago faculty and PhD students conducting research on global conflict. Studies must be rooted in innovative, data-driven research that seeks to understand and reduce global conflict and demonstrates public policy impact.
Researchers awarded a Pearson Grant explore topics that are regionally and topically diverse, each with a focus on using quantitative social science to advance the study of conflict and the potential to advance public policy involving global conflict.
The Pearson Institute Research and Innovation Fund 2025 Awardees
2025 Awardees
Michael Albertus and Lautaro Cella
Professor, Political Science |
Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science
Policies of Indigenous Self-Determination and Community-State Conflict: Evidence from Chile
Reynell Badillo Sarmiento, Santiago Perez-Cardona, and Lina M. Ramirez
PhD Candidate, Political Science |
PhD Candidates, Economics
Internal Cohesion of Armed Groups and Civilian Control in Colombia
Martin Castillo Quintana, Reynell Badillo Sarmiento, and Adee Weller
Assistant Professor, Harris Public Policy |
PhD Candidate, Political Science |
Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, Emory University
Understanding Gang Reactions to Humanitarian Presence in Haiti
Maliha Chishti and Amal Hamada
Assistant Instructional Professor, Harris School of Public Policy and Divinity School | Associate Professor, Political Science, Cairo University
Women Mobilizing for Peace in the MENA Region
Siobhan Finnerty
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Corporations, Community, and Cocoa: A Role for Non-State Actors in Rural Stability
Benjamin Lessing
Associate Professor, Political Science
Can Focused Deterrence and Conditional Repression Save the Amazon?
John Henry Murdy
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Failing to Build the Panopticon: Prisons, Control, and Organized Crime in Latin America
Monika Nalepa and Simone Paci
Professor, Political Science |
Lecturer, Political Science, Stanford University
Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict State Capacity
Pepi Pandiloski and Ari Anisfeld
PhD Candidates, Harris Public Policy
Patrimonialism in Macedonia’s Schools
Raúl Sanchez de la Sierra
Assistant Professor, Harris Public Policy
The Moral Foundations of Violence: A Field Experiment on Violence Prevention in the DR Congo
Raúl Sanchez de la Sierra
Assistant Professor, Harris Public Policy
From Child of Walikale to Taking the Weapon: a Return Trip
Alexandre Simões Gomes Jr.
PhD Candidate, Economics
Identity and Aspirations: Decreasing Youth Participation in Organized Crime, Evidence from Brazil
Daniel Sonnenstuhl and Dauda Musa
PhD Candidate, Harris Public Policy |
Centre for Economic Policy and Development Research, Covenant University
Employment, Salary Payments, and Weak Institutions: Experimental Evidence from Nigeria
Madeleine Stevens and Ana Paula Pellegrino
PhD Candidate, Political Science |
PhD Candidate, Government, Georgetown University
Disappearances, Distrust, and Demobilization: A Survey Experiment in Argentina and Colombia
Maya Van Nuys
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Commercial Security Contributions to International Police Reform
The Pearson Institute Research and Innovation Fund 2024 Awardees
2024 Awardees
Michael Albertus
Professor, Political Science
Ethnic Community Recognition and State-Insurgent Contestation: Evidence from Peru
Sonja Castañeda Dower
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Forced Assimilation and Demands for Sovereignty: Renaming Indigenous People in the U.S.,1890-1910
Sushant Banjara, Claire Fan, and Varun Kapoor
PhD Candidates, Economics and Harris Public Policy
Environmental degradation in one’s own backyard: Evidence from sand mining in India
Lautaro Cella
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Support for Pro-Indigenous Policies Amid Conflict.The Case of the Mapuche in Chile and Argentina
Siobhan Finnerty
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Corporations, Community, and Cocoa: A Role for Non-State Actors in Rural Stability
Varun Kapoor
PhD Candidate, Economics
Local and Migrant Worker Conflict in Spot Labor Markets
Nina Kerkebane
PhD Candidate, Harris Public Policy
Understanding and perturbing discriminatory social norms in Nigeria to alleviate conflict: the case of the Ohu system
Benjamin Lessing
Associate Professor, Political Science
Modeling Persistent Duopolies of Violence: How the State Gets Drug Gangs to Govern for It
Sasha Petrov
PhD Candidate, Economics
Optimal Jurisdictional Borders in Africa
Madeleine Stevens
PhD Candidate, Political Science
“Subversives” and “Delinquents”: The Politics of Active Disappearance in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico
Nicolás Torres-Echeverry
PhD Candidate, Sociology
Between War and Peace: Political Organizing in Twenty-First Century Colombia
Rebecca Wolfe
Senior Lecturer, Harris Public Policy
Shifting the conversation: Piloting behaviorally-informed digital peacebuilding interventions to curb dangerous speech
Austin L. Wright
Assistant Professor, Harris Public Policy
Regime Change and State Capacity
2023 Awardees
Ari Anisfeld and Pepi Pandiloski
PhD Candidates, Harris Public Policy
Social Learning in Segregated Networks
Maria Angélica Bautista
Senior Research Associate, Harris Public Policy
Elements of an African Theory of International Relations
Raman Chhina and Varun Kapoor
PhD Candidates, Economics
Persistence of Political Conflicts: Evidence from Resettlement in East Punjab
Hope Dancy
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Colonial Agreements Project
Shanon Hsuan-Ming Hsu
PhD Candidate, Economics
Industrial Policy, Firm Ownerships, and Ethnic Inequality in Malaysia
Luis Martinez et al.
Assistant Professor, Harris Public Policy
Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire
Jose Miguel Pascual Moreno
PhD Candidate, Harris Public Policy
Labor Unions and Mechanization
John Henry Murdy
PhD Candidate, Political Science
How International Criminal Organizations Consolidate Power: A Crisis in Ecuador
Raul Sanchez de la Sierra and Soeren Henn
Assistant Professor, Harris Public Policy; Lecturer, New Castle University Business School
Challenging Territorial Conceptions of the State: The Bandits Own Perspective
Daniel J. Sonnenstuhl
PhD Candidate, Harris Public Policy
The Causes and Implications of the Pentecostal Movement: Evidence from Nigeria
Madeleine Stevens
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Annihilating “Subversives” and Dehumanizing “Delinquents”: Enforced Disappearance from the Cold War through the War on Terror
Maya Van Nuys
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Policing the International: IOs in the Production of Global Policing Norms
Rebecca Wolfe
Senior Lecturer, Harris Public Policy
Reducing Violence Versus Building Trust: Exploring the Joint Effect of Top-down and Bottom-up Peacebuilding Interventions