Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
The William R. Rhodes Center

Research Opportunities

The William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance seeks to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration among Brown faculty and external partners - through our Institutional Collaboration Grant, and Research Workshop Grant - to further knowledge and build capacity on issues of, and related to, international economics and finance.

The Rhodes Center plans to launch new funding opportunities for Brown University undergraduates, graduates, and faculty to further their research in Fall 2024.

Research Workshop Grants

Brown University faculty and researchers are invited to submit proposals for one-day workshops (or their online multi-day equivalent) aimed at expanding the interdisciplinary understanding of international economics and finance and the impacts thereof. Proposals are welcomed from all parts of the university, including the social sciences and humanities, engineering, the sciences, public health, and medicine. The William R. Rhodes Center is particularly interested in proposals that span multiple academic disciplines. For details contact the Rhodes Center director.

Institutional Collaboration Grants

Supports faculty who wish to build capacity at Brown in areas related to international economics and finance through collaborations with external institutions in the United States and abroad. Whether as a partner in a grant application, as a research partner on existing research, or along other similar lines, we stand ready to support Brown faculty who seek to set up and nurture such relationships. For details contact the Rhodes Center director.

Democratic Politics of Central Banking Working Group

As an economic institution, money straddles financial markets and technocratic expertise. As a political institution, it is the physical instantiation of our interdependence and our collective power, we all use it, desire it, and rely on it. The democratic politics of governing money consequently requires a careful disentangling of questions of legitimacy, power, and expertise that must itself combine empirical tools, legal institutions, and normative judgment. This research group fosters a conversation among a diverse set of scholars aimed at developing a frame of analysis that can cope with both the technical and the normative demands of collectively governing money.

Early American Money Working Group

Bringing together historians, economists, political scientists and scholars across the sciences and humanities, the Early American Money Working Group takes an interdisciplinary approach to the history of American money in the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Civil War eras. It recognizes money not as a fixed entity but as a category of analysis that can reorganize understandings of sovereignty, politics and governance. It is also interested in questions about the cultural construction of money and monetary value and the ways in which diverse groups of Americans have understood the relationship between the organization of money and society. The workshop meets on a monthly basis to discuss works in progress and readings on the history of money.

For more information or to join the mailing list, please contact Ann Daly at ann_daly@brown.edu.