Human Security Lab Wins USAID Contract
Human Security Lab has won a government contract from USAID’s Gender Unit to conduct a rapid academic-stakeholder engagement project determine best practices for gender programming in Afghanistan subsequent to the US withdrawal and Taliban takeover. In line with the requirements described their bid, the Lab will produce an evidence-based policy brief addressing questions of how best the US government can address the human security for women and girls in Afghanistan, given the multiple and in some ways conflicting imperatives of immediate economic security, protection against the perils of renewed armed conflict, and promotion of fundamental human rights.
The Lab, an interdisciplinary project at UMass involving Political Science, Economics and Psychology / Brain Sciences, is pioneering a stakeholder engagement model designed to offer key scientific insights to practitioners on issues pertaining to foreign policy and global human security. The Lab’s approach involves crowd-sourcing scientific knowledge from consultations with global networks of academic specialists in specific domains, combining this with consultations with stakeholders, and addressing stakeholders’ questions / knowledge gaps by communicating the evidence base from academic scholarship that spans geographic and political contexts and applying it creatively to specific policy contexts.
Human Security Lab includes several research clusters and projects underway on humanitarian disarmament and health security. This particular project will be carried out by faculty and graduate students associated with the Lab’s “Women, Peace and Security” research cluster. UMass Political Science doctoral students Catie Fowler and Jenna Norosky and Economics Doctoral Candidate Nara Sritharan have been jumpstarting this project over winter break; Data Analytics doctoral student Isha Mahajan and Political Science Doctoral Student Jaeye Baek have joined the team for Spring semester.
The Lab has particular expertise in Peace and Conflict, as well as a dedicated research cluster focused on gender and security, and has already fielded academic-stakeholder engagements regarding human security in Afghanistan since the US withdrawal, including webinars, consultations, panels, public-facing op-eds and a briefing note on peacekeeping in Afghanistan. Human Security Lab has the capacity to field similar thematic projects quickly, drawing on an extensive network of academics and practitioners as well as the time and expertise of several conflict researchers and advanced graduate students.