Archive

The Center for Global Initiatives (and its predecessor UCIS) have led an array of academic initiatives since 1993. Below are brief descriptions of our past major projects.

If you have any questions about past projects, please contact CGI Director, Niklaus Steiner.

The Role of the Print Media in Forging Press Freedoms: An Exchange Program between Jordanian and American Journalists
In order to meet the double challenge of professional concerns over censorship and individual perspectives and biases on social and cultural differences, we developed a comprehensive exchange program between U.S. and Jordanian journalists to facilitate scholarly workshops and personal exchanges.

Eritrea Exchange Program
We maintained a faculty exchange program with the University of Asmara, Eritrea. This project was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

State Apologies Project
This project explored how the West has started to come to terms with its actions in the world. The Center for Global Initiatives hosted a major conference on this topic in October 2004.

Global American South Rockefeller Resident Fellowship Program
As a host institution of the Rockefeller Foundation's Resident Fellowships in the Humanities and the Study of Culture, the Center for Global Initiatives explored the emergent voices of new immigrants in the American South.

Conferences on the Concepts of Regionalism
In conjunction with the North America Studies Program at the University of Bonn, we explored the concept of regionalism from a comparative perspective.

Triangle Undergraduate Scholar in Security and Human Rights Program
In collaboration with Duke's Center for International Studies,we organized a series of workshops that explored two concepts that often are perceived as being at odds with each other: security and human rights.

Creating the Transnational South
Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Transnational South Project addressed social and cultural changes associated with globalization and economic restructuring in the southern United States which have called forth new flows of people and capital between the North American South and Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, and elsewhere. Population Research Training in the Middle East

National Science Foundation Graduate Traineeship Program
The National Science Foundation awarded us a 5 year Graduate Traineeship grant to support Ph.D. students doing interdisciplinary research on democracy and democratization. This Traineeship program enabled students to build on the full range of contributions to this field. The program worked to overcome the sharp divisions between three major styles of work: studies based on large scale quantitative data sets; historical or cultural studies of smaller numbers of cases; and social and political theory.

UNHCR and the Protection of Refugees and Human Rights
We organized a conference on refugees and human rights in Spring 2001. The timing of this conference coincided with the 50th anniversary of UNHCR, but we did not want it simply to be a glossy retrospective; rather, we looked ahead with a critical eye to assess UNHCR's role in protecting refugees and human rights. While it is clear that refugees and human rights are linked, a dialogue between these two issues is too often missing, and our conference sought to bridge this gap by bringing together experts on refugees and on human rights. We also created a balance of junior and senior scholars.

Legitimacy, Sovereignty, and the Delivery of Women's Health
Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this interdisciplinary research project was implemented at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill between political science and public health, and universities in Tanzania and Zambia. The objective of this research was to analyze the relationship between state and non-state actors in the delivery of public health goods in order to help explain why this relationship has tended to be conflictual and to explore possibilities for cooperation. This research was driven by synthesizing literature on international relations, comparative politics, and public health.

Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Race
In 1999-2000, we were awarded $100,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a Sawyer Seminar "The Concept and Consequences of Race: Cross-National and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives" that was held at UNC throughout the 1999-2000 academic year.

Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Regionalism
In 1999-2000, we hosted a Sawyer Seminar titled "Reading Regions Globally" which highlighted the dynamic tension and interplay between globalism and regionalism and other substantial identities such as ethnicity. The seminar consolidated the efforts of three campus institutions: the Center for the Study of the American South, the Institute for African-American Research, and the University Center for International Studies.

University of Jordan-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Partnership Initiative: Studying the United States Across Boundaries
Together with the Center for the Study of the American South we formed a two-year partnership with the University of Jordan to help strengthen the study of United States, especially the American South.  A series of exchanges and linkages offer Jordanian faculty and students an opportunity to engage in issues concerning American Studies and help develop international partnerships with faculty around the world involved in American Studies programs. This partnership was part of the U.S. Department of State 's Middle East Partnership Initiative, in cooperation with The Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO) and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

MIddle East Demography: an international research and scholarship project.
In partnership with the Carolina Population Center with generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the US Department of Education, we convened scholars from multiple disciplines to explore historical and contemporary institutions, ideologies, and actors that have shaped and are shaping family life in the Middle East (including Turkey and Iran). Experts in the study of the family in sociology, history, law, and religion provided critical commentary on the original contributions presented through conferences and refined through cross-border collaboration.

Mellon Sawyer Seminar on "The Changing Nature(s) of Land: Property, Peasants and Agricultural Production in a Global World." 
Although the literature on globalization generally focuses on high-modernist industrial capitalism, a "flat" world (Friedman 2005) disembodied and divorced from its physical surroundings through space-time compression, contemporary development turns in fundamental ways on the incorporation -- and transformation -- of our most basic natural resource, the land. Land is sustenance, territory, culture, ecosystem, possession, power, and profit. It is social and cultural location in a time characterized rhetorically by rapid flows of information, capital, people, and ideas. And although it has always been such, the nature of our relationship to the land has been profoundly affected by development(s) of the past fifty years. This seminar, titled "The Changing Nature(s) of Land: Property, Peasants and Agricultural Production in a Global World," examined our relationship with land through four central, multidisciplinary themes. The themes addressed widespread transformations in property rights, the emergence of agrarian workers as a political force, the ecological impacts of globalization and economic development, and finally, the intimate nature of food production and consumption from the standpoint of the body to the transnational.

Culture from the Kitchen
"Culture from the Kitchen" brought together students, professors, and community members for an evening of international food and discussion. Each meeting featured a different local restaurant and international cuisine. Past programs featured Indian food and culture at the Indian Palace in Chapel Hill and Ethiopian food and culture at the Blue Nile in Durham.

North Carolina Consortium for the Study of Human Rights
In collaboration with Duke's Center for International Studies, we launched the North Carolina Consortium for the Study of Human Rights (NCCSHR), which was open to scholars and practitioners interested in studying and promoting human rights. The consortium met regularly to present papers, discuss curricula, formulate policy, and develop collaborative projects.

Internationart
Internationart merged art with international studies. In this spirit, we hosted art exhibits and a discussion series with an international focus that engaged artists and international studies scholars in conversation. Each exhibit featured an opening reception where the artist, the campus, and community discussed the exhibit and its social, economic, cultural, and political implications.

Europe, Africa, and the Americas: 1945-2000
UCIS hosted a conference: "Transatlantic Exchanges: Europe, Africa, and the Americas 1945-2000" on October 21-23, 1999. Co-sponsored with the Rudolf Agricola Institute at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Conflict in Africa
In February 1999, we partnered with the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) and orchestrated a conference to address Armed Conflict in Africa with a focus on the origins of African armed conflicts and efforts at reconciliation and conflict prevention. Participants included American, African, and British leaders in government, academia, and the non-profit sector.