The University of Notre Dame’s Poverty Initiative has announced a new round of multi-year investments that will support research projects led by Notre Dame faculty and help recruit prominent poverty scholars to Notre Dame.

Three of the investments were made through the Initiative’s first annual Poverty Research Package funding opportunity. These investments provide research infrastructure support for Notre Dame faculty to elevate their existing research agenda or support new areas of inquiry related to poverty.

The call for proposals drew a strong response in its inaugural year, with 28 submissions from faculty in 15 different departments, centers, and institutes across campus.

“Over 700 million people around the world are living in extreme poverty, with many more just one crisis away. And despite many well-intentioned policies and programs, we still know too little about how to break the generational cycle of poverty,” said Jim Sullivan, director of the Notre Dame Poverty Initiative. “These Poverty Research Packages are just one way Notre Dame is showing its intolerance of poverty, prioritizing the allocation of resources to support Notre Dame scholars working to end it.”

The following inaugural awardees have received funding to advance their high-impact research:

• Kyle Bibby, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, is leading a research effort that aims to understand how pervasive poverty interacts with water insecurity to exacerbate health disparities in Africa's urban slums and to develop interventions to address these intertwined challenges. Bibby is joined by co-principal investigators Ellis Adjei Adams, an associate professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs; Elizabeth Wood, an associate professor of the practice in the Eck Institute for Global Health; Matthew Sisk, an associate professor of the practice in the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society; and Santosh Kumar, an associate professor in the Keough School.
• Abby Córdova, an associate professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs and director of the Notre Dame Eliminating Violence Against Women Lab, is leading a research project that will use qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the effects of national efforts in Mexico to alleviate violence against women through local programs. Córdova is collaborating on this project with investigators at Mexico’s Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas.
• Jason Rohr, the Ludmilla F., Stephen J., and Robert T. Galla College Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences is the principal investigator on a multi-phase research project examining how to empower communities in Africa to escape from poverty-disease traps by eliminating invasive aquatic vegetation that his prior research has shown to be a primary cause of the spread of disease. Rohr is joined by co-principal investigators Lakshmi Iyer, a professor in the Department of Economics, and Chris Barrett of Cornell University.

“Our team is so thrilled to receive Poverty Initiative funding,” said Rohr. “These funds will be instrumental in providing marginalized communities in Africa with the tools they need to escape poverty, prosper, and develop sustainably.”

In addition to these Poverty Research Packages, the Poverty Initiative has announced that it will support new faculty positions for preeminent scholars working at the intersection of migration and poverty. These positions are part of a joint effort between the Keough School’s Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights and a new College of Arts & Letters research and data hub for population analytics, which will focus on research that aims to alleviate poverty among migrant populations, promote inclusive development, and fulfill the inherent dignity and rights of migrants.

“There is a complex link between migration and poverty that impacts the inherent dignity and rights of migrants,” said Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs. “This investment from the Poverty Initiative will help us better understand the role of migration in economic inequality and poverty globally and here at home. And because migration and poverty are inextricably linked to human rights, Notre Dame’s research in this area has the potential to change the world.”

Finally, the Poverty Initiative is supporting two new faculty positions in the Department of Sociology for scholars whose research aligns with issues related to the causes and consequences of inequality and ways to reduce it.

This round of investments adds to an earlier round that supported several campus units in FY24, including the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), the Pulte Institute for Global Development, the Department of Economics, and the Office of Federal and Washington Relations. These funding awards support poverty research, programming aimed to develop Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students’ poverty research skills, and efforts to ensure Notre Dame evidence of what works to alleviate poverty gets into the hands of policymakers and practitioners who can put it to use.

Faculty and staff with questions about the annual Poverty Research Package program or other ways to partner with the Poverty Initiative can contact Leigh Lynes, Poverty Initiative Assistant Director, at llynes@nd.edu.

Originally published by Leigh Lynes at strategicframework.nd.edu on October 14, 2024.