Spring 2019 Innovation Fund Recipients

Lorgia Garcia-Pena, Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of History and Literature
Archives of Justice: Immigrant Stories of Postcoloniality and Belonging in the Diaspora
Archives of Justice is a method of decolonial research that places individual human stories of immigrant subjects within recognizable historical events (wars, colonialisms, social movements) and social processes (LGBTQ, Women’s rights, migration, black rights) to propose an alternative method of historicizing that highlights the lives, contributions and experiences of people often left outside of traditional archives and academic institutions. The main focus of our research project is Immigration. Our archive strives to link immigrant narratives, their experiences in the diaspora to larger historical process in an effort to connect colonialism migration and citizenship through their lives and through the locations/historical moments that shaped them.

Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies
Commonwealth Project St. Louis
At the most general level, the Project seeks to model a new way for universities to engage with social problems and frontline actors by fostering genuine partnerships and supporting community-led initiatives. The intellectual and social mission of the Commonwealth Project is to be thoroughly mutual: to bring frontline knowledge into the university and university know-how into the community. The project has begun its work in St. Louis by partnering with the Equal Housing Opportunity Council, the National Resource Defense Council, Williams College and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville to document and address the toxic living conditions in Centreville, Illinois (East St. Louis Metro). Funded by the IAI, via a grant from the Ford Foundation, as well as by Harvard's Mindich program for community engaged research, four Harvard undergraduates and one graduate student were in St. Louis this summer doing historical research and social mapping, as well as beginning work on several oral and public history projects, documenting the city’s rich African American history and finding creative ways to memorialize and communicate it. A national conference of academics, artists, and activists is planned for spring or summer 2020.

Michele Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies
What we Value: Redefining Worth in the New Gilded Age
This book (to be published by Simon and Schuster in spring 2023) argues that, as fewer in the US feel they are living the American dream, we need to understand how to foster scripts of the self that are less centered on material success and self-reliance, as well as new narratives of hope appealing to younger generations -- a group now experiencing a major mental health crisis across classes. Based on interviews with “agents of change” (comedians, culture creatives, journalists, advocates, activists, etc.) and American college students, I analyze the place of inclusion and “ordinary universalism” in these new narratives of hope, and how these themes are diffused in the hybrid public sphere through “recognition chains.” I also propose different narrative-based approaches to reduce stigma and foster solidarity. The theoretical significance of this study is to improve our understanding of recognition as a central dimension of inequality that influences the distribution of resources. Its social significance is to illuminate cultural conditions feeding the current crisis of American society, propose solutions, and generate a public conversation around the latter. (Updated description posted in March 2022)

Nathan Nunn, Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics
Examining the Lasting Consequences of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
Within the United States, inequality is closely tied to race and a history of race relations. We intend to study whether racial inequality in the United States has part of its roots in one of the largest historical race riots in the nation's history, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. Our quantitative estimates will test whether there were long-term economic, social, and psychological consequences of the 1921 Massacre. Our analysis will examine these issues using detailed linked micro-census data that allows us to study the consequences for individuals and their descendants for decades after the massacre. The funding allows us to hire a research assistant who can help with the analysis of the micro Census data that are crucial for the analysis. The funding will also enable primary research in the archives in Tulsa, which will provide additional fine-grained data, that can be used to estimate the effects of the massacre at the micro-level. (Updated description posted in March 2022)

Stefanie Stantcheva, Professor of Economics
Immigrants, Economic Mobility, and Support for Redistribution
Despite the increase in wealth and income inequality in the United States over the past decades, support for redistribution remains much lower than in other industrialized countries. A potential explanation for this is a persistent belief in the “American Dream”, which is a belief in high social mobility and that anyone can achieve economic success if they work hard enough. This study seeks to better understand the origins of these beliefs and whether they lie in America's history of immigrant settlement. The core of the project is the creation of a new nationally representative survey dataset measuring individuals’ perceptions of mobility, preferences for redistribution policy, and ancestry, across all counties in the United States.