Joseph Rowntree Foundation has generously awarded £565,000 to LSE’s International Inequalities Institute (III) to develop interdisciplinary research on the causes and consequences of inequalities globally, and for a three-year programme to investigate the links between poverty and inequalities.
Launched in 2015, the III draws from LSE’s distinctive strengths and provides coordination and strategic leadership on the interdisciplinary analysis of inequalities.
The gift establishes a new early career fellowship within the III as well as a programme of research on the connections between inequality, diversity and poverty which will be led by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE). The programme aims to review the relationships between inequalities of various kinds and poverty, such as the consequences of living in an unequal society for those in poverty, parental resources’ effect on social mobility, and how inequality risks poverty for different groups, such as by ethnicity, gender, disability, or migration status. The funding will also ensure a programme of practitioner visitors to the III and a public engagement programme of events and publications to support the research.
John Templeton £1.2 million gift enables Centre for Economic Performance to investigate enjoyment of life. Thanks to this landmark gift from the John Templeton Foundation, LSE is set to provide policy-makers over the next three years with a quantitative model of what determines an individual’s enjoyment of life and their behaviour to others, both as children and adults. At present no such model exists, but thanks to research from the School and its partners over the last ten years, the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) will be able to utilise exemplary cohort data, including that which examines the role played by factors such as mental health and personal values. The three-year project is being led by Professor Lord Layard.
LSE has received a third round of funding, amounting to just over £900,000, from Stiftung Mercator, one of the leading German charitable foundations supporting research institutions. This support will help enable the 2016 Dahrendorf Symposium, the third of its kind. It will also support associated research groups, comprising post-doctoral fellows, visiting academics and practitioner fellowships and support. The project is coordinated at the School by LSE IDEAS. Dr Robert Falkner, LSE’s Academic Co-Director of the Dahrendorf Project, succeeded Professor Arne Westad in this role in January 2015.
The Rockefeller Foundation has renewed its longstanding philanthropic support of LSE through a gift of $900,000 towards the International Growth Centre (IGC), supporting the Centre’s collaboration with the government of Sierra Leone in revising their national strategic plan for a community health workforce. This is an integral part of their efforts to build resilience within the country’s health system in the wake of the Ebola crisis. The Rockefeller Foundation’s philanthropic association with the School stretches back as far as the 1920s, with the first in a series of gifts spanning the next two decades. Between 1923 and 1937, Rockefeller’s giving to LSE totalled $2m, or £500,000 – the significance of the sum made apparent by the fact that the School’s total revenue expenditure during the whole of these 14 years amounted to just under £1.5m. This latest gift to the IGC is a continuation of an invaluable relationship to LSE.