acCLAim
Liberal Arts Research and Scholarly Work newsletter
Jessica Stanton, Associate Professor, Political Science
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My interest in civil war violence began in college. In 1998, I studied abroad in Senegal hoping to better understand sustainable development efforts. But in West Africa at the time, much of the conversation concerned the recent civil war in Liberia, the ongoing conflict in Sierra Leone, and international criminal accountability for the Rwandan genocide. Upon my return to the United States, I redirected my academic focus to issues related to civil conflict, international intervention, and post-conflict reconstruction.
In my research, I seek to generate nuanced understandings of large-scale violence, and insights that aid in preventing wartime atrocities, strengthening the enforcement of international human rights and humanitarian law, ending conflicts, and establishing peace after civil war. In many armed conflicts, armed forces intentionally target civilian populations. In my book, Violence and Restraint in Civil War (2016), I analyze why some governments and rebel groups deliberately attack civilians during civil war, while other groups do not. I show that some groups exercise deliberate restraint toward civilians and respect international humanitarian law in order to win support from domestic and international audiences. The book draws on statistical analyses of violence in more than 100 civil wars that took place in countries around the world from 1989 to 2010 and on interviews in Indonesia and Uganda. Currently, I am examining the global spread of laws criminalizing terrorism and the, at times, perverse impacts that these laws have on human rights.
For more information, click here.
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FEATURED PUBLICATION
Does learner cognition count on modality? Working memory and L2 morphosyntactic attainment across oral and written tasks
Janire Zalbidea, Cristina Sanz
Prof. Janire Zalbidea explains the importance of her work:
Acquiring a foreign language in adulthood is becoming increasingly common and has numerous benefits, including advantages in professional advancement. However, language learning is a highly complex endeavor characterized by many individual differences in both the rate and outcome of leaning. The rise of technology in education has also highlighted the need to understand the affordances and demands of self-directed language learning in computer-assisted environments. This research examines how different memory aptitudes predict college-age students' successful development of Spanish morphosyntax under different computerized task conditions. It also explores the connections between different memory aptitudes and students' perceptions of how much mental effort an instructional task requires and how difficult they find the task to be. With implications for language learning theory, research findings shed light on the mental processes underlying the initial stages of learning a foreign language and the cognitive demands posed by different types of instructional components. Study outcomes are also informative for language teaching, as they provide insights that can optimize the efficacy of foreign language instruction in computerized environments in support of more individualized pedagogy.
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AWARD OF THE MONTH
The featured award this month is a recent grant entitled “ProNET: Psychosis Risk Outcomes Network” from the National Institute of Mental Health to
Dr. Lauren Ellman (
Psychology). Dr. Ellman is part of an international team that is researching the origins of schizophrenia in adolescents and young adults through a new $52 million grant that is funding a consortium of researchers across 27 institutions in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Schizophrenia is a significant public health issue, yet the development of treatments has been limited by the high degree of variability in symptom development between individuals in the early stages of the disease. The project will address this issue through recruiting more than 1,000 young people who are at clinical high risk for psychosis, and following them with clinical and biomarker assessments, including brain structure and function, psychopathology and cognition, genetics, behavior, and natural language and speech, over two years. The overarching goal of the study is to examine how variation in these biomarkers can be used to predict individual clinical trajectories, with a view to developing new treatments that are specific to the “prodromal” state that often precedes the onset of full-blown schizophrenia.
Additional information is available here and also here.
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INTERNAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
LIBERAL ARTS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH AWARDS (LAURA Scholars)
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Deadline: APRIL 1st
The goal of the LAURA Scholars' program is to create more opportunities for undergraduate students to develop research skills by working with faculty mentors on faculty-led research projects while increasing support for faculty research in CLA.
~This call for proposals is for summer and fall 2021~
Presidential Humanities and Arts Program Grant Application Announcement
Stay tuned - an updated RFP and application deadline date will be released soon!
Temple University Funding Opportunities Portal
InfoReady, OVPR's funding opportunities portal, houses internal funding program mechanisms and externally sponsored limited submission competitions. Log in today to access your account and review current opportunities.
SAMPLING OF EXTERNAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
ACCOLADES
- Douglas Duckworth (Religion) has won a Tsadra Foundation Distinguished Research Grant in Tibetan Buddhist Studies. Click here on the foundation website where Dr. Duckworth is now featured.
- Vishnu Murty (Psychology and Neuroscience) has received continuation funding from UNC Chapel Hill (NIH) for the project entitled, The Aurora Study - Longitudinal Assessment Of Post-Traumatic Syndromes.
- For the project entitled, Early Childhood Education Research, Kathy Hirsh Pasek (Psychology) has received funding from the William Penn Foundation.
- Ingrid Olson, (Psychology and Neuroscience) has received continuation funding from the National Institutes of Health for the project entitled, Between Encoding and Retrieval.
______________________________________________________________________________________________ DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNTIES AND RESEARCH NEWS
Summer Salary
Are you slated to receive summer salary from a sponsored project? Begin working with your administrator now to organize your summer payments related to research effort.
Reminder: *NEW NIH SALARY CAP ANNOUNCED*
Effective January 3rd, 2021, the Executive Level II salary cap level increased to $199,300.
Changes to IRB Processes
The Temple University IRB is pleased to announce several changes in review processing designed to streamline reviews, reduce investigator burden, and more closely align our reviews with federal regulations. The changes are summarized below, additional information related to each change can be found on the IRB Training and Resource Page.
Search for New IRB Members
The Temple University IRB is seeking nominations and self-nominations for new members, including a Vice Chair, to join our IRB Committee. The A1 and A2 IRB Committees review both medical and social behavioral research protocols and meet monthly. Members are expected to read all materials to be reviewed at a meeting, attend the meetings, and maintain current CITI certification. Please direct self-nominations and any questions to David Comalli (dcomalli@temple.edu). Nomination emails should include an up-to-date CV and department affiliation, professorship rank, and appointment.
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