Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) is the largest funding agency for academic research in Japan. Fellowships are offered for graduate students, Ph.D. students, post-doctoral fellows, researchers, and professors at all levels in all fields. If you are interested in researching in Japan, join us for a hybrid information session with JSPS SFO staff to find out more. 

Featuring Prof. Kiyoteru Tsutsui, director of the Japan Program at APARC and center deputy director.

JSPS SFO will be hosting a giveaway and providing lunch! 

If you have any questions, you can reach JSPS SFO at: (510) 665-1890 or sfo-fellowship@overseas.jsps.go.jp

SCCEI Seminar Series (Spring 2025)

Friday, May 2, 2025 | 1:45 pm -3:05 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Flick, Click, and Sick: Mental Health Risks of Short-Video Platforms

This study examines the causal impact of short-video platforms like Douyin on mental health in China since 2016. Using city-level data on platform adoption and 4G expansion, combined with individual panel data from the China Family Panel Studies, we identify causal effects by focusing on pre-2016 mobile internet users in high-4 G-penetration cities. Our findings reveal significant mental health deterioration among affected individuals, with stronger depressive symptoms emerging over time. Effects are most pronounced among vulnerable populations: rural residents, youth, the elderly, and those without college degrees, with rural left-behind youths and the elderly showing the most severe outcomes. We identify four key impact channels: (1) heightened social comparison and inequality perception, with affected users reporting lower perceived income and greater awareness of societal inequality; (2) altered time use, including reduced work hours, sleep, and exercise; (3) declining non-cognitive abilities and physical health, evidenced by lower self-reported health status and increased doctor visits; and (4) weakened interpersonal relationships, demonstrated by decreased time and attention affected adults devote to parents and/or children. These findings highlight the unintended consequences of digital innovation on mental health, particularly for vulnerable demographics, and offer important insights for policymakers balancing technological advancement with public health considerations.

Please register for the event to receive email updates and add it to your calendar. Light refreshments will be provided.

About the Speaker 
 

Ting Chen is an associate professor in the Department of Accountancy, Economics and Finance (AEF) at Hong Kong Baptist University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Social Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2015. Her research specializes in political economy, economic history, and long-term development economics, with a focus on assessing the effectiveness and economic impact of China’s historical and current policies. Her works have been published in Economic Journal and Quarterly Journal of Economics. She serves as the associate director of the Centre for Business Analytics and the Digital Economy (CBADE)  in the School of Business. She is the associate editor of Pacific Economic Review and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu
 

About the event: Over the last two decades, the United States has supported a range of militias, rebels, and other armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Critics have argued that such partnerships have many perils, from enabling human rights abuses to seeding future threats. Is it possible to work with such forces but mitigate some of these risks? In Illusions of Control: Dilemmas in Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Erica L. Gaston explores U.S. efforts to do just that, drawing on a decade of field research and hundreds of interviews with stakeholders to unpack the dilemmas of attempting to control proxy forces.

The book has been described by reviewers as a "grim but necessary autopsy of America’s policy failures” in the last two decades (Ariel Ahram) and a book that casts light on the "moral hazards and strategic pitfalls of partnerships forged in war" (H.R. McMaster). Gaston’s conclusions not only suggest a greater need for strategic thinking in how risks are managed and weighed in U.S. Security Policy, but also help nuance the academic frameworks and lenses used to understand proxy warfare dynamics. By combining insights and tools from the fields of international relations that incorporate a more diverse set of international actors with domestic bargaining and organizational theory, the book helps to expand the theoretical toolkit for understanding foreign policy generation.

About the speaker: Dr. Erica Gaston is Head of the Conflict Prevention Programme at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s SIPA programme. Her most recent book with Columbia University Press, Illusions of Control: Dilemmas of Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, was recently short-listed for the Conflict Research Society’s Book of the Year Prize 2025. Her prior academic articles and book compendiums have considered changing norms and practices within international humanitarian law.

She has a B.A from Stanford University, a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from Cambridge University.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Scholars of nuclear brinkmanship have long debated whether nuclear crises are dominated by a balance of resolve, or whether nuclear superiority may offset that balance in favor of the more technologically advanced competitor. Recent studies indicate the latter, suggesting that the high accuracy of modern strategic weapons may have ushered in a “new era of counterforce dominance.” The state that masters those weapons, they argue, can steel their resolve if they become confident in their ability to eliminate an adversary’s retaliatory nuclear forces in a disarming first strike. Yet these counterforce enthusiasts overlook an important technological headwind: the complexity of advanced weapon systems can confound nuclear planners’ ability to predict their performance in a real nuclear exchange. This challenge is particularly acute for counterforce systems that cannot be tested in operational settings, and whose failure would bring catastrophic consequences on their user. Drawing from scholarship in complexity theory and science and technology studies, Lawrence argues that nuclear competitions are also beset by a balance of nuclear humility: States with more grandiose, technically demanding nuclear doctrines can be less confident in their knowledge, must work harder to retain their capabilities, and can hence be less certain in the success of their nuclear missions. More humble competitors may address their vulnerabilities with relatively modest innovation, and fret less over vagaries of the unknown. Crucially, the advantages and disadvantages of technological humility can run against those traditionally associated with the balances of capability and resolve. Lawrence illustrates this dynamic by constructing a Monte Carlo simulation of a counterforce strike with modern US strategic missiles on China’s silo-based missile force. He shows that small variations in parameters that cannot be known to the attacker with certainty correspond to wide variation in strike outcomes. The resulting uncertainty in costs to the attacker complicates popular strategic theories of damage limitation.

About the speaker: Christopher Lawrence is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs in Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He studies the histories of U.S. nonproliferation engagement with North Korea and Iran, as well as the epistemic communities in the West that create knowledge about those countries’ nuclear programs. His academic writing has been published in International Security, Social Studies of Science, Journal of Applied Physics, and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. He has also written policy analysis for various online publications, including Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and War on the Rocks.

Prior to Joining SFS, Christopher carried out postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation; Harvard’s Program on Science, Technology and Society and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; and Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security. He carried out his PhD dissertation in Nuclear Science and Engineering at University of Michigan, where he developed novel neutron-spectroscopy techniques for characterizing nuclear warhead components for treaty verification.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Nuclear power in Eastern Europe has been framed in various ways depending on political context: as a uranium state-building project, a key element of international decarbonization efforts, a model for reducing energy dependence on Russia, and an environmental risk slated for phase-out. Yet, one crucial aspect remains overlooked: how gendered expertise has sustained Bulgaria’s nuclear industry for decades—and how it remains entangled with the social hierarchies shaping nuclear energy production.

This talk draws on ethnographic and historical research, along with footage from a film-in-progress, to explore the labor, expertise, and social lives of women working in nuclear spaces along the Danube River. It focuses on two key sites: the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant, which continues to expand, and the Belene Nuclear Power Plant, a stalled project since the end of socialism. As laboratory technicians, construction managers, and power plant engineers, these women navigated state socialist labor policies, shifting gender expectations, and the demands of both career and family. Their perspectives offer deeper insight not only into the evolving role of women’s expertise in the nuclear power industry but also into how human labor itself is being reconfigured in relation to aging nuclear infrastructures—whether left to decay or reimagined as part of the “green” energy transition.

About the speaker: Elana Resnick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and leads the Infrastructural Inequalities Research Group. Her published work includes articles in American Anthropologist (2021), American Ethnologist (2024), Cultural Anthropology (2024), Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (2018), and Public Culture (2023). Her forthcoming book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe, will be published by Stanford University Press in July 2025.

Resnick’s scholarship has received multiple awards, including the 2022 American Anthropological Association GAD Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship, the 2023 Women’s Forum Article Prize from the British Association for Slavonic & East European Studies, and the 2024 Association of Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS) Heldt Prize for the Best Article in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Women’s and Gender Studies. Her current research focuses on the environmental and social politics surrounding nuclear power development and decommissioning in Europe. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has received research support from the Wilson Center, the Council for European Studies, the School for Advanced Research, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright Program.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

All images are copyrighted and may not be reproduced, copied, or used without explicit written permission.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

SCCEI Seminar Series (Spring 2025)

Friday, May 16, 2025 | 12:00 pm -1:20 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Renegotiating Patriarchy: Property, Lineage, and Gender Inequality in Contemporary China

Gender wealth gaps persist across societies, often attributed to individual factors such as education, work experience, and lifetime earnings. However, structural inequalities rooted in traditional patriarchal kinship systems—characterized by patrilocal marriages and patrilineal inheritance—systematically exclude women from inheriting family wealth. To examine how women and their families navigate these institutional barriers in wealth and inheritance, I conduct original surveys and field research in China, where rapid economic and demographic transformations coexist with enduring patriarchal norms. Specifically, I demonstrate that in the Chinese context, where surname inheritance is closely tied to wealth inheritance, declining fertility rates, coupled with economic and cultural shifts, have spurred growing public support for assigning maternal surnames to children. I further show that this renegotiation of patrilineal practices surrounding surnames and lineage enables Chinese women to maintain a closer bond and secure greater support from their natal families. These findings shed light on the mechanisms through which social change unfolds within patriarchal systems and reveal key conditions for women’s empowerment in the private domain.

Please register for the event to receive email updates and add it to your calendar. Lunch will be provided.

About the Speaker 
 

Fangqi Wen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Ohio State University. Before joining OSU, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University and a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology at ​Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Sociology from New York University.

Fangqi’s research centers on the relationships among social institutions, demography, and gender inequality. Specifically, she examines the sources of inequality and how women and their families renegotiate patriarchal social norms. Additionally, she studies social stratification and mobility in historical settings and investigates the misperceptions of inequality and social mobility in the contemporary world. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as Demography, Social Science Research, Population and Development Review, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has been featured in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and South China Morning Post.

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu