Margaret O’Mara, Professor, UW History

ABSTRACT: From the working conditions at Amazon warehouses to the white-collar pushback of the #GoogleWalkout, conditions of high-tech labor have seized headlines and triggered broader discussion about the inequities and insecurities of the modern workplace. Margaret O’Mara discusses the longer history behind Big Tech’s company culture and employment practices, and why current worker activism has the potential to alter the trajectory of where tech goes next.

Margaret O’Mara is the Howard & Frances Keller Professor of History at the University of Washington. She writes and teaches about the history of U.S. politics, the growth of the high-tech economy, and the connections between the two. She is the author of Cities of Knowledge (Princeton, 2005), Pivotal Tuesdays (Penn Press, 2015), and The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (Penguin Press, 2019). O’Mara is a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians and a past fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education. She received her MA/PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA from Northwestern University. Prior to her academic career, she worked in the Clinton White House and served as a contributing researcher at the Brookings Institution. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband Jeff and their two daughters.
FORMAT: The presenter’s paper will be circulated to registered attendees a week in advance of the workshare. Participants are expected to read the paper before the meeting and be prepared for a discussion. Please feel free to bring your lunch. Coffee and cookies will be served.

RSVP: To register for the workshare and receive the paper, please e-mail hbcls@uw.edu .

Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer, PhD Candidate, UW Political Science

ABSTRACT: Traditionally, scholars have investigated the privatization of retirement security through the lens of pension reform, austerity measures, and the decline of defined benefit plans and the rise of defined contribution in countries across the world. However, few scholars have investigated the privatization of public pension fund investment. The privatization of investment, through both board governance and investment allocation in alternative assets, has a significant impact on the capacity of the state to fulfill its retirement obligations.

This paper investigates the relationship between board composition and pension investment privatization through a mixed effects longitudinal model of 111 state-level public pension funds from 2001 to 2017. I find that rather than board structure, board composition has a more significant impact on the likelihood of pension investment privatization. More specifically, the increase in state and plan-participant appointments on the board are associated with an increase in pension investment privatization. Similarly, pension funds that have an increase in the number of board members with financial experience are more likely to invest in pension privatization. Whereas, an increase in public sector union membership is correlated with a decrease in investment privatization.
Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer is a Ph.D. student in Political Science whose research focuses on labor unions and the management of public pension funds. . Prior to coming to UW, she worked with a labor union on domestic and international corporate research campaigns. She has also spent time in rural India conducting livelihood research with grassroots organizations. Her previous academic background is in city and regional planning, with a bachelors from UC Berkeley and a Masters from UC Irvine.
FORMAT: The presenter’s paper will be circulated to registered attendees a week in advance of the workshare. Participants are expected to read the paper before the meeting and be prepared for a discussion. Please feel free to bring your lunch. Coffee will be served.

RSVP: To register for the workshare and receive the paper, please e-mail hbcls@uw.edu .

Rewriting Violence: Risk Effects and the Targeting of Journalists in Mexico’s Criminal Conflict

Cassy Dorff

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, and Faculty Affiliate, Data Science Institute, Vanderbilt University, http://cassydorff.com/

Over the last 12 years, Mexico has become a dangerous place to be a journalist. Increasingly, journalists are targeted and killed for reporting on the causes and consequences of violence tied to organized crime. In this paper, we seek to understand how this risk-environment influences the content and strategies of reporting at one of Mexico’s most well known national newspapers, Reforma. Our study utilizes two novel sources of data. The first capture attacks on journalists during the drug war period, while the second uses natural language processing techniques to measure changes in reporting on victimization and violence at Reforma. In this paper, we present preliminary evidence demonstrating the link between violence against journalists and changes in news content over time.

Entebbe – Uganda, 18-22 November 2019

“Harnessing Africa’s Population for Sustainable Development: 25 Years after Cairo and Beyond.”

Hosted by the Government of Uganda and the Union for African Population Studies

Deadline for submitting papers or abstracts: 30 June 2019

Every four years, The Union for African Population Studies (UAPS) organizes a general conference on the African population. The aim of this conference is to share and disseminate research evidence on population and development issues and explore ways for applying the research evidence to improve policies and programs aimed at uplifting the well-being of people in Africa. The conference provides an opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing among researchers, policy makers, program managers, international development partners, and other key stakeholders in the population field. The conference includes various capacity building activities targeted at young scholars.

UAPS invites submissions for research papers, assessments of best practices, proposals for workshops, posters and exhibitions under the sessions grouped across the 16 sub-themes and sessions listed in the attached call for papers.

All submission must be made online on the 8th African Population Conference Website, http://uaps2019.popconf.org/.

All authors are asked to submit both: a) a short (150 word) abstract; and b) either an extended abstract (2-4 pages, including tables) or a completed paper to be uploaded to the website following instructions available online. Authors may modify their submission online at any time until 30 June 2019.

For more details please read the full Call for Papers attached.

If you have any questions, please contact: uaps@uaps-uepa.org

Join us for engaging discussions with leaders from business, government, and

academia on the latest developments in cybersecurity and technology, including privacy, systemic risk, artificial intelligence, international threats, state and homeland security, and crisis management and informatics.

Enjoy an opportunity to network with speakers and colleagues at the conclusion of each lecture. All are welcome!

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) anticipates soliciting applications for Behavioral Interventions Scholars grants to support dissertation research by advanced graduate students who are using approaches grounded in behavioral science or behavioral economics to examine specific research questions of relevance to social services programs and policies. These grants are meant to build capacity in the research field to apply a behavioral science or behavioral economics lens to issues facing poor and vulnerable families in the United States, and to foster mentoring relationships between faculty members and high-quality doctoral students. Applicants will be required to demonstrate the applicability of their research to practice or policy serving low-income children, adults, and families, especially those that seek to improve their well-being. Specific topics of interest may be delineated in the full funding opportunity announcement. For information about OPRE, please go to https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre. For information about related work ongoing within OPRE, please go to https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/behavioral-interventions-to-advance-self-sufficiency-bias-research-portfolio.

 

Funding Oppportunity Title:	Behavioral Interventions Scholars
Funding Opportunity Number:	HHS-2019-ACF-OPRE-PD-1570
Program Office:	Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation
Funding Type:	Discretionary
Funding Instrument Type:	Grant
Announcement Type:	Initial
CFDA:	93.647
Post Date:	05/03/2019
Letter of Intent Due Date:	06/03/2019
Application Due Date:	07/02/2019

The Social Impact Track offers a half-day focused exclusively on innovative KDD-relevant projects in areas such as sustainable urban planning, crime prevention, education, smart cities, data ethics, social justice and humanitarian issues. This workshop will bring together data experts working with data on socially relevant problems.

We seek to bring together a diverse community of researchers in data science for social good and AI ethics efforts, as well as cross-disciplinary and cross-sector partnerships to show the state-of-the-art in research and applications.

We are soliciting submissions primarily from collaborative projects, whether publicly or privately funded. We will give preference to open innovation projects, especially those with contributions to open source, open data, or contributing to socially impactful goals. However, we welcome submissions from projects that do not exactly fit these criteria if they provide new insights and compelling demonstrations.

For more information about KDD2019 and this session please visit:

https://www.kdd.org/kdd2019/Calls/view/social-impact-call-for-papers

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support innovative approaches to identifying, understanding, and developing strategies for overcoming barriers to the adoption, adaptation, integration, scale-up and sustainability of evidence-based interventions, tools, policies, and guidelines. Conversely, there is a benefit in understanding circumstances that create a need to stop or reduce (“de-implement”) the use of interventions that are ineffective, unproven, low-value, or harmful. In addition, studies to advance dissemination and implementation research methods and measures are encouraged.

PAR-19-274 (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)

PAR-19-275 (R21 Clinical Trial Optional)

PAR-19-276 (R03 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)