Two University of Wisconsin Law School professors have received major funding from WAGE (the UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy) to lead cutting-edge collaborative research projects focusing on important challenges related to globalization and its governance.
Winners of each project grant will receive a total of $100,000 in funding over a three-year period.
Law School Professor John Ohnesorge and collaborative partners Gay Seidman (Sociology) and Aseema Sinha (Political Science) serve as principal investigators for the first collaborative project, "Governance in Economic Development: Law, Politics and the Role of the State."
This project will analyze ways in which the role of the state is being reinterpreted and renegotiated in response to globalization, and how more interventionist states will interact with today’s highly globalized international economy. It builds on the observation that the era of the "Washington Consensus" is over and the activist, interventionist state appears to be making a comeback around the developing world. Four countries lie at the core of the project: Brazil, India, China, and South Africa.
The project will be administered by the Global Legal Studies Center, a joint initiative of the Law School and the Division of International Studies.
Law School Professor Stephanie Tai, joining with Professor Vicki Bier of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Physics, will lead the project "Managing Challenges of Import Safety in a Global Market."
The project will examine market, regulatory, and hybrid approaches to managing risk from contamination of food commodities in the global supply chain. It will evaluate the relative capacity of national regulatory systems, international standards, and market forces to provide the necessary resources and incentives to address the problem of product safety through efficient testing, inspection, and quality control. The project seeks to identify cost-effective strategies for inspection, auditing, and sampling of imported food.
In addition to the two projects submitted from the Law School, a third won funding: "Governing New Conflicts in Global Energy Futures," to be led by Professors Tracey Holloway (Environmental Studies, Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, Civil & Environmental Engineering), Bernard Lesieutre (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Greg Nemet (La Follette School of Public Affairs and Environmental Studies) and Paul Wilson (Engineering Physics).
In announcing the awards, WAGE commented, "These exciting interdisciplinary collaboratives will enrich the campus community by bringing in distinguished visitors, holding conferences, advancing important research questions, developing critical web and data resources, training graduate students, and sharing their expertise with the businesses, government, and the public of Wisconsin."
More than 17 additional faculty and academic staff members from across the university have signed on to participate in these projects in various capacities, building on the expertise of the university’s many area studies and other specialized centers.
For more information about the UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE), visit http://wage.wisc.edu or contact Dr. Alison Alter, WAGE Associate Director, at abalter@wisc.edu or (608) 262-9774.
Submitted by on April 9, 2008
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