PhD-1400x300

Phelan US Centre PhD Summer Research Grants


2023-24 marks the sixth year of the Phelan US Centre's PhD Summer Research Grant scheme

 
I have benefited immensely from the Summer Research programme as it enabled me to continue and finish my data collection for my PhD project

Julia Leschke – 2020-21 Grant Recipient

Our summer research grants aim to encourage innovative research on the United States and to support students pursuing postgraduate research on topics related to the Centre’s overall mission of promoting internationally-oriented scholarship on America’s changing role in the world. The Summer Grant scheme is open to all LSE PhD students who are conducting US-related research. Proposals should fall under one of the Phelan US Centre’s core research themes. 

The grants provide support to the development of early career scholars at the LSE while also aiming to help with research activities for example: including data collection, field work, and/or designing and implementing a survey. The grants are not intended for language study or purchasing equipment. The grant award is £2500.

For more information on previous years' research projects click here.

PhD-2022-23

 

2022-23 Research Projects

1. Contextualizing Universalism: Trade Union Benefit Provision in the US and the UK at the turn of the 20th Century

Maya Adereth, Department of Sociology

My PhD dissertation asks: why didn't the US labour movement advocate universal public health and pension schemes during the Progressive Era—when many of its European counterparts had launched nationwide campaigns for public insurance? I pursue this question through a comparative historical lens, placing the trajectory of the US labour movement in dialogue with its most similar parallel in the UK.

The labour movements in both countries emerged out of an apolitical and voluntarist tradition which denounced government paternalism and upheld the moral virtues of self-help and thrift. For this reason, trade unions in both cases developed an expansive system of voluntary insurance benefits, including funds for sickness, unemployment, superannuation, and death. By the late 19th century, the movements diverged: whereas the British labour movement abandoned its insurance schemes and campaigned for Old Age Pensions (1908) and the National Insurance Act (1911), the American Federation of Labor clung to benefit provision and campaigned against the proposals for public insurance advanced by progressive reformers. This turning-point held significant implications for the development of the countries’ respective welfare states in the following decades.

Read Maya's report.

2. Investigating Regulatory Capture of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Robin Forrest, Department of Health Policy

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the most influential drug regulatory agency globally. As I outlined in my recent LSE USAPPP Blog post, the FDA effectively sets the bar in terms of evidentiary standards and incentives for new drugs globally. However, recent approvals have prompted questions as to whether FDA decisions are always made in the public interest. New drugs are increasingly being approved with high levels of clinical uncertainty, at extraordinary prices.

The aims of this project are to (I) elicit the US public preferences concerning drug approvals, and (II) to demonstrate empirically whether these preferences are aligned with FDA current practice for approving new drugs.

3. Effects of Exposure to Online Polarization on Generalized Trust

Tiffany Lau, Department of Government

While social media is now an essential site of election campaigns and political discourse, political life online is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, ‘fake news’, propaganda, hostility, trolls, bots, and more. The vast majority of political content online is produced by a tiny minority of unrepresentative users, and tends to be moralized, emotional, and contentious - i.e., highly polarized.

While plenty of work has been done in the race to understand whether this is causing political dysfunction, e.g. whether social media is causing polarization or increasing the probability of violence, less has been done to understand the secondary social consequences, for instance, whether such a climate surrounding American political discussions online is affecting our ability to trust one another and work together. More specifically, does exposure to polarized political discourse online affect generalized trust?

4. Do Social Media Create Bias in Democratic Deliberation?

Nick Lewis, Department of Government

Social media have become increasingly important spaces for political communication and discussion. Facebook, in particular, has been widely cited as influencing recent electoral contests around the world, including the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. However, we still have much to learn about how digital media are shaping the way we talk about politics. Until now, research has focused upon the loudest voices in political debate. Who is most likely to disengage from online political debate, and why?

Leveraging Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann's seminal 'Spiral of Silence' theory, I argue that the introduction of divisive issues in Facebook groups leads to a within-subject decrease in the likelihood of engaging in political discussion. Further, I argue that this effect is greater in politically-heterogeneous groups than in politically homogeneous groups. Finding an answer will give us insight into how social media have shaped - and will continue to shape - political discussion, with important implications for democracy. 

5. Consumers’ Demand for Digital Privacy

Xinchen Ma, Department of Finance

The trend of globalization represented by global trade seems to have flattened relative to its peak in the 20th century. But globalization hasn't gone into reverse. It's gone digital. Recent decades have brought a digital revolution such that personal data and big data analytics are now essential elements of business, fuelling a $227 billion-a-year data industry across the globe. This sweeping change powers economic growth but also poses the risk of privacy intrusion and unethical consumer surveillance.

Despite the ongoing discussions and major regulatory efforts, there is little evidence on whether and to what extent consumers demand data privacy and what factors drive their privacy preferences and awareness. This research seeks to advance our understanding of consumer demand for data privacy by addressing three objectives.

Read Xinchen's report.

6. Political Ideology & Innovation

Marta Morando, Department of Economics

Ideological distance has been increasing in the US in recent years and democrats and republicans are becoming further away from each other (Pew Research Center, 2014). From the analysis of survey data, it is possible to see that this holds across a variety of topics and controlling for a variety of characteristics. Being more right-wing is associated with less support for the environmental cause, and for women’s rights, but more confidence in the role of the army and the police, among others. Is this ideological division also reflected in tangible economic choices?

This research project aims to understand whether and how this polarizing pattern may affect innovation. It is relevant to study this phenomenon in the context of innovation –not only because innovation is one of the main drivers of economic growth and well-being—but also because recent evidence has underlined that the individual background of inventors is crucial in shaping the direction of innovation.

7. Quantifying the Importance of Legal Assistance for Social Welfare Problems: A Comparative Perspective

Juliet-Nil Uraz, Department of Social Policy

Although the United States is an outlier among OECD countries in the ubiquity of evictions that renters experience, no federal program guarantees legal assistance to those who are evicted. In the absence of such a guarantee, legal representation for low-income tenants is scarce, uneven, and exceptional. In response, New York City pioneered a right to counsel for tenants facing evictions in 2017. A growing body of evidence found that the program’s recipients were less likely to be evicted. There, lawyers stemmed evictions. But how enduring and protective is such an attorney’s representation? Questions linger, first, about whether lawyers' interventions break or merely postpone housing insecurity; and second, about whether and how seeing a lawyer helps tenants resolve what went wrong in the first place.

In this project, I use econometric methods to answer those questions by evaluating the introduction of NYC’s right to counsel.My ultimate goal is to study how providing legal assistance to low-income households can help alleviate poverty.

Read Juliet's report.