Past Research

Past Faculty Research Fellows Projects
Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellows lead two- or three-year interdisciplinary research projects that are aligned with the Center’s mission and interests in topics related to improvements in the human condition over the long-term. The Pardee Center provides “seed funding” for project support and in most cases works with the Faculty Research Fellows to seek additional external funding for continuation of the research. The Faculty Research Fellows produce Pardee Center publications and lead seminars or other events related to their research.

20 Years of War: A Costs of War Research Series
This research series was a two-year collaboration with the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University to expand the ongoing Costs of War project. The “20 Years of War” research series explored the human, financial, environmental, social, and political costs and consequences of the post-9/11 wars and illustrates how the impacts of the wars will ripple into the future.

Human-Environment Interactions and Land Use Dynamics
This research explored the complex interactions between humans and the environment and how these interactions drive land-use changes that are critical for global processes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem degradation.

The Future of Energy Systems in Developing Countries
This project examined the plausible pathways for achieving energy security in a select number of developing countries based on a variety of factors, including political and societal conditions, available technology, financing mechanisms, and geographic realities.

Climate Impacts, Food Security, and Multiple Breadbasket Failures
This project sought to understand the potential consequences of crop productivity failures in the world’s major breadbasket regions.

Wildlife Management in Novel Ecosystems
This research examined the challenges of wildlife management and conservation in human-dominated landscapes, specifically exploring how the management of deer in urban and suburban landscapes presents new challenges for wildlife managers.

Institutional Risk of Climate Policy and Adaptation Investments
This project assessed the financial risk of stranded assets (e.g. shuttered fossil fuel plants) due to aggressive climate policy, and examined the financial risk of climate adaptation investments by development banks.

Land Use Change, Food Security, and Long-Range Telecoupling
Building upon the Pardee Center’s research on multiple breadbasket failure, this project sought to reveal where losses in agriculture may have the greatest global impacts, providing insights into the relationships among distant locations (i.e. telecouplings).

Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI)
A research program established jointly by the Center for Finance, Law & Policy; the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future; and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. GEGI was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment. It is now the flagship initiative of the newly created Global Development Policy Center.

Enhancing Energy Efficiency for Urban Housing
This multi-disciplinary research project aims to identify the factors that drive energy use and determine effective programs that can achieve greater energy efficiency, while considering residents’ comfort levels and desired energy-use needs.

Task Force: Higher Education and Innovation in Emerging Economies
This interdisciplinary group of experts explores the opportunities, challenges, and policy implications of improving higher education and innovation in emerging economies and the impact of these policies on the relationship of emerging economies with developing countries.

The Urban Century
The Urban Century initiative brings together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to look at innovative approaches and successful models that may help alleviate some of the pressures that necessarily accompany rapid expansion of population and land area covered by cities.

Pardee Center Task Force: Environmental Governance
A study of the current structure and function of governance from local customs and approaches to multilateral international agreements.

Development That Works
BU convened an all-day conference on March 31, 2011, which brought together leading scholars and practitioners to discuss development ideas that have been demonstrated—or have the potential—to lead to sustainable and effective development.

Pardee Center Task Force: Latin America 2060
The Pardee Center and Latin American Studies Program formed a Task Force to analyze the likely developments in Latin America over the next 50 years and the social, economic, political, and cultural patterns most likely to emerge.

South-South Economic Relations
This project brought together leading experts from across the world for a conference held September 23-24, 2010 to look at the emerging dynamics of economic relations among developing countries.

Diasporas and Development
The Pardee Center brought together scholarship and insight from a variety of disciplines to examine examples from across the globe on the variety of ways in which diasporas impact the development of the countries they had originally left behind.

South Asia 2060
This project aimed to facilitate a dialogue amongst experts from various disciplines across South Asia and the world on the likely longer-range trajectories of South Asia’s future as a region.

Task Force Meeting and Gaming Session | Games for a New Climate
An all day participatory game session aimed at linking action with knowledge in the context of growing climate risks. The event was sponsored by the Pardee Center in collaboration with by the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center.

Global Governance for Sustainable Development
This program brings together a series of projects related to multilateral and international institutions for the governance of sustainable development in all its aspects, including the social, economic, and environmental.

Africa 2060
This program of activities, including a major conference and a series of publications, looks at multiple aspects of African development and the trends defining Africa’s future.

Searchlight: Visualization and Analysis of Trend Data Project
This project developed data analysis and visualization tools for futures foresight research and applies these to the Rockefeller Foundation’s ongoing “Searchlight” project.

Sawyer Seminar Series | Energy Transitions
What were the cultural, social, and historical forces that generated past energy transitions? This project brought an international group of scholars to Boston University throughout 2010–2011 for a series of seminars addressing questions related to energy transitions.

Future of Energy
What might the energy-society relationship look like in 2100? The Pardee Center assembled an international team of energy experts and asked them to answer this question.

Where is China Headed?
Three Decades of Reform and Opening in China. Lessons for the Future. A Pardee Center conference led to an edited book based on papers presented at the conference.

Governance in the Developing World
Tackling issues such as democratization, corruption control, and capacity-building, this cluster of research activities all seek to better understand the dimensions of governance in developing countries.