W&M’s Global Research Institute receives $900K grant
Carnegie Corporation of New York funds research that informs public policy
March 3, 2025
By
Tina Eshleman
Renewed support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York will allow William & Mary’s Global Research Institute (GRI) to push forward key programs that connect policymakers with cutting-edge research, spread public awareness about GRI’s work and bring scholars from a wide range of backgrounds to work with students.
A recently approved $900,000 Carnegie grant provides two years of funding for GRI. It follows a similar three-year grant from the philanthropic foundation, whose goal is to do “real and permanent good in this world.”
GRI Director Mike Tierney ’87, M.A. ’88, P ’15 said the Carnegie funds support multidisciplinary research focused on pressing global issues such as Chinese foreign policy, U.S. national security policy, conservation and mobile technology and development.
“Our ongoing partnership with Carnegie incentivizes faculty to work closely with students and practitioners, and it is designed to raise the profile of William & Mary research with policy communities,” said Tierney, the George & Mary Hylton Professor of International Relations at W&M. “With Carnegie support, we are helping William & Mary faculty to engage with scholars beyond their immediate academic discipline and to get their data, analysis and policy recommendations in front of decision-makers in government, the private sector and within international organizations.”
The new Carnegie grant will build on the foundation’s previous support of GRI’s Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project, a world leader in producing data and analyses on the relationship between the study and practice of international relations. For example, TRIP conducted two snap polls of international relations scholars from across the United States last year on the role of foreign policy issues in the 2024 presidential election. Another poll planned for this spring will ask foreign policy experts to assess the Trump administration’s foreign policy record during its first 100 days in office. Results will be published in Foreign Policy magazine and discussed at a public event on campus on April 22.
The new grant also will support the continuation of GRI’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity, launched as a pilot program in 2020. The two-year postdoctoral fellowship creates a pipeline for outstanding scholars in the fields of international relations, applied history and data science. These fellows, in turn, serve as research mentors for William & Mary students. Carnegie support, combined with university matching funds and additional donor investment, has enabled GRI to expand its number of postdoctoral fellowships to six currently.
“While we're looking to attract postdoctoral fellows from traditionally underrepresented groups, we are also interested in intellectual diversity and finding postdoctoral fellows who are coming at issues from nontraditional angles,” said Ryan Musto, GRI’s director of forum and research initiatives.
The postdoctoral fellows teach one course per year, and the fellowship allows them to hire students as research assistants.
“These students are brought into the research projects as collaborators, and some of them end up co-authoring articles on pressing problems,” Musto said. “Our hope is that it helps to encourage students to get into these research fields and find their own voice.”
While students benefit from interacting with postdoctoral fellows from around the world, the fellows themselves gain skills and experience that help them advance in their careers – for example, running a research lab, writing grant applications, briefing policymakers and writing for public audiences.
“We've been successful in helping to place some of these postdoctoral fellows at William & Mary,” Musto said. “When they go on to other positions elsewhere, they are then better positioned to make contributions in their fields.”
One example is Julius Odhiambo, a former postdoctoral fellow with GRI’s Ignite Lab. Odhiambo started a two-year position with William & Mary in August 2021, and has since become a tenure-track assistant professor in W&M’s kinesiology department.
Another is Nara Sritharan, who has remained at W&M after her postdoctoral fellowship as a visiting assistant research professor with a joint appointment in the economics department and GRI’s AidData lab.
Sritharan collaborated with Kritika Jothishankar ’25 on an academic article published in December in the Journal of International Development about the impact of remittances — money sent back home by expatriates — on household wealth in Sri Lanka, a country devastated by a prolonged civil war. The co-authors drew on their findings about remittances to write a separate analytical piece for The Diplomat, a popular international current affairs magazine, published in January: “The Hidden Lifeline for Afghans: Remittances.”
Pairing an academic article with one in a more widely read publication expands the reach of William & Mary’s research, Sritharan said. She credits student collaborators like Jothishankar with bringing fresh ideas and insights to her projects.
“The students at Willian & Mary are very impressive, and I find a lot of joy in creating opportunities for them,” she said. “Trying to help them with their future careers is something that makes me feel fulfilled.”