Workers from large corporations such as Instacart, Amazon, and Whole Foods are organizing strikes and protests for enhanced safety measures and sufficient pay to compensate for risky working conditions. In a recent New York Times article, CSDE Regional Affiliate Jake Rosenfeld provided expertise on the effectiveness of workers’ actions. Rosenfeld explains that organizing is generally unusual in declining economic times. Rosenfeld also suggest that he is “skeptical that these kinds of protests would achieve much without help from legislation or unions.”
The New York Times featured Rosenfeld in an additional article on organizing in which he states, “he was skeptical that workers could capitalize on the current anxiety and frustration absent favorable legislation that enables organizing, a more accommodating response from employers or more robust assistance from established institutions, like existing unions.”
The Population Health Initiative has launched a COVID-19 rapid response grant program to support the University of Washington research community in quickly responding to the vast array of population health-related challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Awards of up to $20,000 each are available. The initiative will fund at least five grants, with one of the awards supported by the university’s Office of Global Affairs. The period of performance for these awards is four months. Applications are due on April 16, 2020. The purpose of this funding call is to rapidly accelerate, or jumpstart, novel research designed to better understand or mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on multiple facets of life. The call is broad in scope, and applications can propose interventions in areas including, but not limited to, the following:
- Basic research/understanding the fundamental mechanisms of the virus
- Basic research on population dynamics and social contexts influencing infection spread and containment
- Diagnostics
- Treatments
- Approaches to rapidly scaling production of personal protective or essential equipment like ventilators
- Preparing for effective mass immunization once a vaccine becomes available
- Economic and social impacts and recovery approaches, including addressing issues of equity
- Mental health impacts
- Risk communications/flow of information/impact of communicating interventions like social distancing/other communication
Project ideas can be proposed that will either (1) quickly bring to bear new knowledge, or (2) that will allow work on a larger, longer-term project to begin immediately as the project team continues to seek the necessary external funding for the bigger component.
Applicants are encouraged to propose projects involving interdisciplinary collaborations as the initiative views such partnerships as being critical to improving health and well-being.
Recent legislation, such as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, has provided some financial and tax relief. Student loan payments are automatically deferred until Sep. 30, 2020. Anyone with almost any kind of federal student loans (with some exceptions) will have their payments automatically suspended for up to six months with no accrual of interest. These six months will, however, still count as progress towards forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or any Income-Driven Repayment Plan, such as Pay As You Earn (PAYE), Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) and Income-Based Repayment (IBR). This expands and extends the student loan interest accrual and payment freeze that has been in place since March 13, 2020. Please note that these benefits do not apply to private loans (i.e. loans that were refinanced with private financial institutions), FFEL loans held by private institutions, or loans made by the Department of Health.
For further information and FAQs, please click the link below.
This Friday, Stefanie DeLuca from Johns Hopkins University’s Sociology Department will present results from a study about upward income mobility and barriers to neighborhood choice. The premise of their research begins with the observation that low-income families in the US tend to live in neighborhoods that offer limited opportunities for upward income mobility. DeLuca and co-authors evaluate several explanations for this observed pattern. One explanation is that families prefer such neighborhoods for other reasons, such as affordability or proximity to jobs. An alternative explanation is that they do not move to high-opportunity areas due to various barriers. Their study employs a randomized controlled trial with housing voucher recipients in Seattle and King County. They conclude that redesigning affordable housing policies to provide customized assistance in housing search could reduce residential segregation and increase upward mobility substantially.
Register for Stefanie DeLuca’s Zoom Seminar HERE
The Population Health Initiative will begin accepting applications for the 2020-21 cohort of students for the Graduate Certificate in International Humanitarian Response on Wednesday, April 1, 2020. Applications can be submitted until 11:59 p.m. (Pacific) on Tuesday, April 28, 2020.
The certificate is intended to provide University of Washington graduate and professional students from a variety of disciplines with an integrated body of study to better support prevention, mitigation, response and recovery from crises to assist those affected by disasters to recover their “normal” way of life.
The 15-credit curriculum for the certificate offers admitted students a solid grounding in the fundamental skillsets needed by any international humanitarian worker, regardless of their specific role. In particular, the core curriculum was chosen to ensure the certificate integrates the work of the immediate and mid-term humanitarian response to a disaster with longer-term development activities in a disaster-prone region.
The certificate is offered as an interdisciplinary program through the University of Washington Graduate School.
This is an offer for a 3-year, full time Post-Doctoral Researcher position and another offer for a PhD contract at Sciences Po-CSO within the framework of a joint ANR-DFG (Agence nationale de la recherche and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) research project on the emergence of a new intellectual property regime in Europe. The project is entitled “Unified – Transnational institutionalization from interregional diversity: The emergence of the European Unified Patent Court“. It will be carried out in collaboration with the University of Heidelberg. The deadline for applications is 15 May 2020. The research programme starts in September 2020. Related publications are available here:
Global Washington hosts numerous trainings and educational events each month, ranging from small workshops on topics like communications, fundraising and nonprofit management, to larger speaker events, to VIP events with policymakers. Additionally, our annual conference convenes the international development community on the west coast, including top NGO practitioners, CSR business executives, research experts, philanthropists and others working on global issues.
GlobalWA will be doing all events in a webinar format for the foreseeable future. Please check our past events page for past topics and check back here for our future weekly webinar topics. For more information on COVID-19, check out GlobalWA’s Resource Page.
We are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work within the Queensland Centre for Population Research on two multi-institution migration-related projects recently funded by the Australian Research Council. The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will make academic contributions to both projects by conducting statistical analysis and contributing to journal paper publications, conference presentations and stakeholder consultation workshops. The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will work with project collaborators in other institutions in Australia and China and will also have the opportunity to co-supervisor PhD students.
This position is located at our picturesque St Lucia campus, renowned as one of Australia’s most attractive university campuses, and located just 7km from Brisbane’s city centre. Bounded by the Brisbane River on three sides, and with outstanding public transport connections, our 114-hectare site provides a perfect work environment – you can enjoy the best of both worlds: a vibrant campus with the tradition of an established university.
The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is recruiting highly qualified Post-Docs/Research Scientists, at various levels of seniority, to join the Lab of Digital and Computational Demography.
MPIDR is one of the leading demographic centers in the world. It is part of the Max Planck Society, a network of more than 80 institutes that form Germany’s premier basic-research organization. Max Planck Institutes have an established record of world-class, foundational research in the sciences, technology, social sciences and the humanities. They offer a unique environment that combines the best aspects of an academic setting and a research laboratory.
The Lab of Digital and Computational Demography, headed by MPIDR Director Emilio Zagheni, is looking for candidates with a background in Demography, Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Geography, Applied Mathematics, Public Health, Public Policy, or related disciplines.
Two postdoctoral appointments are offered for social scientists with excellent analytical and writing skills that have recently completed their PhD or will complete it by the summer of 2020. The candidates will join the project “Healthy lifespan inequality: Measurement, trends and determinants”, funded by the European Research Council as a Consolidator Grant to Dr. Iñaki Permanyer and hosted by the Center for Demographic Studies (CED) in Barcelona. HEALIN is a 5-year project that will start in June 2020.