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October 24, 2006
MMC Receives Grant for Professor’s Economic and Human Rights Study
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(New York, NY) Marymount Manhattan has received $171,000 in funding to support of a project led by Radhika Balakrishnan, Ph.D., Professor of International Studies and Economics at MMC.
Realizing Economic and Social Rights: A Comparative Country Study will identify how economic, social and cultural rights can be incorporated into discussions of development policy and human rights, especially in Mexico and the United States. Dr. Balakrishnan will collaborate over a two-year period with Mexico-based Fundar, Center for Analysis and Investigation to complete the project.
A $200,000 grant from Ford in Mexico was awarded to Fundar, with a $121,000 share to be transferred to MMC. A separate $50,000 grant from the Ford Foundation’s New York operation was awarded directly to Marymount Manhattan, and is intended to cover the cost of a comprehensive meeting addressing the study.
In order to focus her efforts on the study, Dr. Balakrishnan is taking a leave from teaching at MMC this academic year. Two International Studies majors, Sydney Alexis Krauss ’07 and Chris Perre ’07, will be assisting her with her research through independent study projects.
Dr. Balakrishnan is conducting her research on practices in the United States this fall. In January she will travel to Mexico for several months in order to collaborate further with Fundar and study on the ground in Mexico. Researchers from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom and UN organization CEPAL will also be partnering on the study.
In October 2005, Dr. Balakrishnan published Why MES with Human Rights? Integrating Macroeconomic Strategies with Human Rights, a report that grew out of a series of meetings between human rights experts and macroeconomists, and also sponsored by the Ford Foundation. That report sparked discussion in economic communities around the world, and was in many ways the catalyst for the continued analysis of the United States and Mexico.
About her latest collaboration with the Ford Foundation, Dr. Balakrishnan says, "I am thrilled to have this opportunity. I hope that this work will lead to policy change where we desperately need it."
Having earned her Ph.D. in economics from Rutgers University, Dr. Balakrishnan has worked as a program officer at the Ford Foundation. Her fields of research include gender and economic development, global inequality and labor issues. She is interested in the connection between global economic institutions and cross border organizing, and the relationship between changing conditions of work, gender dynamics and the global economy in addition to theology and ethics.
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