Stanford University

Everything that Can Go Wrong in a Field Experiment

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Join Global Development and Poverty Initiative (GDP) for a stimulating discussion on the opportunities, obstacles, and unforeseen events encountered while conducting field research in the developing world.

The panelists will share stories of challenges and successes from their own experiences and will offer insights on conducting effective research in the field.

Panelist

Jenna Davis

473 Via Ortega, Y2E2, Room 255
Stanford, CA 94305-4020

(650) 725-9170
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Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
jennadavis.jpg PhD

Jennifer (“Jenna”) Davis is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Higgins-Magid Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, both of Stanford University. She also heads the Stanford Program on Water, Health & Development. Professor Davis’ research and teaching is focused at the interface of engineered water supply and sanitation systems and their users, particularly in developing countries. She has conducted field research in more than 20 countries, including most recently Zambia, Bangladesh, and Uganda.

Higgins-Magid Faculty Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Panelist
Katherine Casey Panelist

Stephen P. Luby

Y2E2
473 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-4129 (650) 725-3402
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Faculty Lead, Center for Human and Planetary Health
Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases)
Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health (by courtesy)
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
steve_luby_2023-2_vert.jpg MD

Prof. Stephen Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prof. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, for five years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death.  Immediately prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Prof. Luby served for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. He was also the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.

During his over 25 years of public health work in low-income countries, Prof. Luby frequently encountered political and governance difficulties undermining efforts to improve public health. His work within the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) connects him with a community of scholars who provide ideas and approaches to understand and address these critical barriers.

 

Director of Research, Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Seminars

Working with the Grain: Fostering Democratic Development at the Edge of Chaos

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Abstract:

“Best practices” prescriptions for democratic reform confuse the end point with the journey of getting from here to there, so  are not  useful in responding to the governance ambiguities of the early 21st century. In this seminar, Brian Levy will introduce an alternative approach laid out in his new book, Working with the Grain: Integrating Governance and Growth in Development Strategies (New York: OUP, 2014).

In many nascent democracies, power is fragmented,  the rule of law and  public bureaucracies are weak; political stability is sustained through personalized deals. The way forward in such settings is to set aside ‘best practices’, and engage with things as they actually are seeking out ‘with the grain’ opportunities for initiating a virtuous spiral of forward economic momentum and incremental, cumulative improvements in institutions. As the seminar will explore, the implications for action of this altered perspective are profound --  on  the economic front, on the institutional front and  vis-à-vis how commitment to a democratic approach to development can be sustained over the long-haul.

 

Speaker Bio: 

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Brian Levy is a Senior Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, USA. He worked at the World Bank from 1989-2012, where he led the group tasked with scaling up support for public sector reform in Africa, and subsequently co-led the effort to mainstream governance and anti-corruption into the organization's operational programs.Along with Working with the Grain, he has authored, co-authored and co-edited numerous books and articles on the interactions between public institutions, the private sector and development in Africa, East Asia, and elsewhere, includingGovernance Reform: Bridging Monitoring and Action (World Bank, 2007), Building State Capacity in Africa (World Bank Institute, 2004), and (with Pablo Spiller)  Regulations, Institutions and Commitment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Prior to joining the Bank he was assistant professor in development economics at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He completed his Ph.D in economics at Harvard University in 1983.

Brian Levy Senior Adjunct Professor School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Seminars

Does Contemporary Armed Conflict have 'Deep Historical Roots'?

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*** PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS WEEK'S THURSDAY CDDRL SEMINAR IS HELD ON WEDNESDAY***

 

Abstract:

We assess the degree of persistence in armed conflict in particular places over the last two centuries.  At the regional level, we find some evidence of anti-persistence, consistent with Tilly's arguments about war and state-building: Eastern and Western Europe had large amounts of conflict from 1815-1945 and almost none after, whereas Africa, Asia, and the Middle East had moderate amounts before and large amounts after.  Within regions, by contrast, we find that places that experienced colonial and imperial wars before 1945 (or before 1914) were more likely to have civil wars after independence.  The degree of persistence is not much affected by controls for durable features that may affect conflict levels in both periods (such as initial population, land area, ethnic diversity, terrain roughness, income, and colonial power), suggesting that at least some of the effect is due to conflict in one period causing conflict later.  We can rule out persistence being due to long-lasting ethnic feuds, and find little evidence that places with more developed pre-colonial states were consistently more likely to have fought with colonizers and then with other groups after independence.  There is some evidence that colonizers fought where there happened to be groups with greater martial cultures or traditions, and that these may have persisted to some degree post-independence.

 

Speaker Bio: 

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James D. Fearon is Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  His research focuses  on political violence – interstate, civil, and ethnic conflict in particular – although he has also worked on aspects of democratic theory and the impact of democracy on foreign policy.  He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including “Self-Enforcing Democracy” (Quarterly Journal of Economics), “Can Development Aid Contribute to Social Cohesion after Civil War?” (American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings), “Iraq’s Civil War” (Foreign Affairs), “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States” (co-authored with David Laitin, in International Security), “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War” (co-authored with David Laitin, in American Political Science Review), and “Rationalist Explanations for War” (International Organization).  Fearon was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.  He has been a Program Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research since 2004.  He served as Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford from 2008-2010.  

James D. Fearon Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science Stanford University
Seminars

Political Order and Political Decay

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Abstract: 

politicalorderpoliticaldecay
Francis Fukuyama will discuss the second volume, Political Order and Political Decay, of the bestselling landmark work on the history of the modern state. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West.

 

Speaker Bio:

fukuyama francis self portrait logo
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. Fukuyama was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director for the State Department's policy planning staff. He is the author of The Origins of Political Order, The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy.

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Encina Hall, Bechtel Conference Room

616 Serra St.

Stanford, CA

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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What we have Learned about Iraq from the Ba`th Party Archives

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Abstract:

Determining the specificities of everyday political life in one of the 20th century's most notorious dictatorships – Iraq under Saddam Hussein – is possible as a result of the availability of more than ten million internal security force and Ba`th party documents recovered after the overthrow of the Iraqi regime in 2003. The documents associated with this collection, which is currently housed at Stanford's University's Hoover Institution, provide a rich picture of the everyday practices of Iraq's highly repressive autocracy.  Using data from these captured documents, I provide empirical evidence about the political practices of citizens living under highly difficult political circumstances.

 

Speaker Bio:

blaydes logo

Lisa Blaydes is an Associate Professor of Political Science and a faculty affiliate of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.  She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt(Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review,International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

Encina Hall 

Philippines conference room - 3rd floor Central 

Room C330

616 Serra St.

Stanford, CA

Lisa Blaydes Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Affiliate Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University
Seminars

Climate Change, Sustainability and International Security

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Abstract:  The industrial and agricultural revolutions have profoundly transformed the world. However, an unintended consequence of these revolutions is that we are affecting the climate of Earth. I will describe the rapidly changing energy landscape, an “epidemiological” approach to assessing the risks of climate change, and its impact to international security. I will then give a perspective on mitigating these risks with science, technology and policy with emphasis on developing the lowest cost solution.

About the Speaker: Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. His research spans atomic and polymer physics, biophysics, biology, biomedicine and batteries. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for the laser cooling and trapping of atoms.

From January 2009 until April 2013, Dr. Chu was the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy and the first scientist to hold a cabinet position since Ben Franklin. During his tenure, he began ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs, the Clean Energy Ministerial meetings, and was tasked by President Obama to assist BP in stopping the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. Prior to his cabinet post, he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, and head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dr. Chu is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Sinica, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology. He has been awarded 24 honorary degrees, published more than 250 scientific papers, and holds 10 patents.

Steven Chu William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

All Our Relations: Indigenous Rights Movements and the Bureaucratization of Indigeneity in Taiwan

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Abstract

Taiwan’s indigenous social movement, active since the 1980s, has successfully lobbied to get indigenous rights included in the Republic of China Constitution, to create a cabinet level Council of Indigenous Peoples, and to pass the 2005 Basic Law on Indigenous Peoples. Taiwan’s indigenous social activists have also become regular participants in United Nations indigenous events. Especially during the Chen Shui-bian presidency, foreign observers often suspected that the state instrumentalized “indigeneity” to claim a distinct identity from China. Events since 2008, however, demonstrate that the indigenous rights movement has maintained its own momentum and that the indigenous peoples have interests that cannot be reduced to issues of national identity or party politics. In fact, the indigenous people overwhelmingly support the KMT, and indigenous movements are involved in both “pro-unification” and “pro-independence” political networks.  Most indigenous social movement leaders, as well as ordinary indigenous people, hope that their movement can make progress in indigenous rights in ways that transcend the “blue” and “green” division between Han Taiwanese. This talk will explore the diversity of the indigenous movements, their mobilization strategies, and values since Ma Ying-jeou was elected President of the ROC in 2008.


Speaker Bio

Scott Simon holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from McGill University, and began his career working in the anthropology of development. Two separate research projects led to his books Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Cultures (2005), as well as Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs (2003). He has worked extensively on ethnographic research with Truku and Sediq groups in both Hualien and Nantou counties of Taiwan since 2004. His third book - entitled Sadyaq Balae! L’autochtonie formosane dans tous ses états – was published in French by the Laval University Press. This book is an exploration of state-indigenous relations, including the social movements that often contest state projects on indigenous territory. He has in recent years, in annual trips to Taiwan, been working more closely with Truku-speaking trappers and hunters, who have been teaching him about ethno-biology and human-animal relations in addition to sharing their discontent about Taiwan’s legal regime that criminalizes most hunting activities. 

 

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Scott Simon Professor School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, Research Chair in Taiwan Studies, University of Ottawa
Seminars

Progress towards Ignition on the National Ignition Facility

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Abstract: Ignition has been a long sought-after goal needed to make fusion energy a viable alternative energy source, but ignition has yet to be achieved.  For an inertially confined fusion (ICF) [1] plasma to ignite, the plasma must be very well confined and very hot, to generate extremely high pressures needed for self-heating – achieving this state is not easy!  

In this talk, we will discuss the progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Northern California.  We will cover the some of the setbacks encountered during the progress of the research at NIF [2], but also cover the great advances that have been made. 
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Omar Hurricane is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and lead scientist for the High-foot Implosion Campaign on the NIF.  His research focuses on weapons physics, high energy density physics science, and plasma instability.  Dr. Hurricane has authored 60 journal publications and 60 conference papers, largely in the area of plasma physics and high-energy density physics (HEDP). He has received several awards and honors, including the U.S. Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for National Security and Nonproliferation (2009), five U.S. Department of Energy Defense Programs Recognition of Excellence Awards (2002, 2004, 2009 x 2, 2010), and three LLNL Directors Science & Technology awards (2010, 2011, and 2013).  Dr. Hurricane received his B.S. in Physics and Applied Mathematics from Metropolitan State University of Denver, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was also a post-doc for four years.  Dr. Hurricane was also a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (CISAC) in the 2010-2011 academic year. 

 


Progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Omar Hurricane Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, AX-Division Speaker Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Seminars

Japan's Development Cooperation: 60 Years History and its Prospects

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60 years have passed since Japan started its development cooperation in 1954.  Japan has undergone the process of a defeated country of World War II becoming an economic superpower in the 1970s-1980s to be stagnant in the succeeding two decades.  During these periods, Japan's financial contribution to development cooperation once reached the highest among the OECD countries in the 1990s. But recently Japan's financial contribution stays at 4th or 5th. How has the Japanese development cooperation evolved over the past six decades? What have been its characteristics? What are the current debates of future direction of Japan's development cooperation? What role does it play in overall Japan's diplomacy and international relations?

 

Mr. Ak

ihiko Tanaka is President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Before assuming the present post, he was Professor of International Politics at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. Most recently he was Vice President of the University of Tokyo (2011-2012), Executive Vice President of the University of Tokyo (2009-2011), and Director of the Division of International Affairs of the University of Tokyo (2008-2010).

He obtained his B.A. in International Relations at the University of Tokyo in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981.

Mr. Tanaka’s specialties include theories of international politics, contemporary international relations in East Asia, and Japan’s foreign policy. He has numerous books and articles in Japanese and English including the New Middle Ages: The World System in the 21st Century (Tokyo: The International House of Japan, 2002).

He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his academic achievements in 2012.

 

 

Akihiko Tanaka President Speaker President, Japan International Cooperation Agency
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Japan Colloquium Series

Rethinking the First World War from the Perspective of International Law

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About the Topic: Re-establishing and strengthening the rule of international law in 
international affairs was a central Allied aim in the First World War. Revisionism in its many 
forms has erased this from our memory, and with it the meaning of the war. Imperial 
Germany’s actions and justifications for its war conduct amounted to proposing an entirely 
different set of international-legal principles from those that other European states recognized 
as public law. This talk examines what those principles were and what implications they had 
for the legal world order.
 
About the Speaker: Isabel V. Hull received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978 and 
has since then been teaching at Cornell University, where she is the John Stambaugh 
Professor of History. A German historian, her work has reached backward to 1600 and 
forward to 1918 and has focused on the history of sexuality, the development of civil society, 
military culture, and imperial politics and governance. She has recently completed a book 
comparing Imperial Germany, Great Britain, and France during World War I and the impact 
of international law on their respective conduct of the war. It will appear in Spring 2014 
under the title, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World 
War. Her talk is based on this latest research.

Central Conference Room, Encina Hall (2nd Floor)

Isabel Hull John Stambaugh Professor of History Speaker Cornell University
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