4 proposals selected for the 2023 Sciences Po TRF

The Sciences Po Transatlantic Research Fund (Sciences Po TRF) provides Sciences Po researchers the opportunity to initiate and engage in research with peers from a U.S. university, supporting the development of transatlantic ties through research. Four proposals for innovative research in various disciplines in the social sciences have been selected in response to the 2023 call for proposals. 

Jérôme Doyon, Junior Professor at Sciences Po CERI, and Aaron Glasserman, Academy Scholar at The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, will collaborate on their research titled: The Historical Evolution of Ethnic Ordering in the PRC: A Reconsideration from the Perspective of Personnel Management. This project addresses the fundamental question: How has the Chinese party-state bureaucratically ordered—through personnel recruitment, deployment, and organization—the risks and opportunities involved in ethnic governance? Their research will leverage under-utilized sources and cutting edge methods developed for the study of organizational and personnel management in the PRC, undertaking the first-ever systematic collection and analysis of data on the individuals engaged in PRC “ethnic work” and the bureaucracy in which they operate. The project also aims to contribute to the ongoing transatlantic discussion on how to conduct rigorous research amid growing constraints, especially related to the collection and exchange of sensitive data/documents.

Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Director at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, and Marlène Laruelle, Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, will be working jointly on their research, Global Illiberalism: The Domestic and International Interplay of the National-Populist Trans-Atlantic Relationship. The project explores the interplay between domestic political landscapes and the international scene to show that many external and internal contestations of the liberal order are entangled and transnationally interconnected. It proposes a long-awaited decentering from Russia’s and China’s influence to include the structuration of a Transatlantic anti-liberal trend in the Global North and another one in the Global South that largely bypass the usual West/non-West, democracy/authoritarianism, pro-US/pro-Russia or pro-China dichotomies. The project connects global politics, democracy, and social justice issues and will result in a collective research and outreach effort and a consolidation of the institutional links between Sciences Po and GWU.

Beatriz Botero Arcila, Assistant Professor of Law at Sciences Po, Chinmanyi Sharma, Assistant Professor of Law at Fordham, and Olivier Sylvain, Professor of Law at Fordham, will work together on their Transatlantic Research Collaborative on AI Law and Governance. This year-long project will unfold amongst scholars from Sciences Po, Fordham University and partner organizations (“the Collaborative”), providing a platform to engage in a dialogue and collaboration with each other on the fast-developing field of AI law and governance. The Collaborative will work towards (1) fostering the development of cross-disciplinary research specifically responding to the immediate threats and challenges presented by AI; (2) interfacing with the private sector and policymakers internationally during special closed-door convenings to ensure the research is practicable, responsive to governance priorities, and reflective of realities on the ground in AI development; and (3) support participants in the publication of their work in internationally renowned law reviews and peer reviewed journals and its dissemination across different disciplines and stakeholder groups to ensure real impact.

Jean-Philippe Cointet, Researcher at Sciences Po Médialab, and Sylvaine Guyot, Professor of French Literature, Thought, and Culture at NYU, will collaborate on the project: Standing Up and the Body Politic: The Stage as Political Evidentiary Practice. This prototype research project, meant to investigate a growing form of political interventions in France- the first-person auto-theater testimony on stage- aims to document the forms of political interventions that these new genres usher in by studying the performance themselves and their modalities of resonance in the French press. The transformations of the political scenes in the USA and France with the rise of populist agendas carried out by politicians outside the mainstream political parties and a taste for ridiculing the politics of representation serves as the backdrop of Standing Up. By collecting and analyzing these other forms of evidence through performance, the researchers will contribute to the current debate around the new forms of political actions with their uncanny redistribution of the established divide between the singular and the collective, the personal and the general.