Departments and Programs
related to the study and research of
Southeast Asia
Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/hrp/
The Human Rights Program (HRP) seeks to give impetus and direction to international human rights work at Harvard Law School.
Now in its twenty-fourth year, the HRP fosters course work and participation of students in human rights activities through its summer fellowships, clinical work, speaker series, applied research and scholarship. The HRP advises students wishing to conduct research projects with human rights organizations, and provides counseling in the field.
The HRP also plans and directs international conferences and roundtables on the leading human rights issues and debates in the field. Through these activities, the HRP seeks to make international human rights an integral part of a Harvard Law School education. It works to educate students who will be among the leaders of the human rights movement, and foster progress within the movement through its scholarship, engagement, criticism and suggestions.
Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/index.html
The Department of Social Medicine is an interdisciplinary basic science department of Harvard Medical School. Its faculty of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, ethicists, social policy specialists, and clinicians teach and conduct research about the social, cultural and moral aspects of illness and health care, with a special emphasis on reducing health disparities and improving the quality of medical care.
The Department has strong academic programs of research and training in the social sciences basic to medicine - medical anthropology, the history of medicine, and medical ethics. The goal of the Social Medicine curriculum at HMS is to provide students with the intellectual and analytic resources to recognize and respond to key social, cultural and ethical dilemmas in contemporary medicine.
Central to the mission of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School is an effort to address several of the most significant global health problems affecting low-income societies and under-served American communities. Members of the Department develop innovative interventions for dealing with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, mental illnesses, and drug abuse in resource poor settings. Researchers, policy specialists, and clinicians work together to develop knowledge necessary for instituting complex responses to some of the most challenging global health problems of our era, and innovative programs of medical services provide opportunities for interdisciplinary research which generates new knowledge about diseases, health disparities, and the effectiveness of new forms of care. These activities are organized through the Program in Infectious Diseases and Social Change, Partners in Health, the Program in International and Community Mental Health, the Program in Urban Health, and the Center for the Study of Culture and Medicine.
Medical Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/social_med.html
Medical anthropologists and other faculty at Harvard work on a variety of theoretical and ethnographic issues, including: violence, urban anthropology, mental illness and cross-cultural psychiatry, subjectivity and culture, social suffering, stigma, ethics and bioethics, human rights, pharmaceuticals, substance abuse, infectious disease and epidemics, aging, governmentality, transnationalism and borders, and history of medicine and science. Participants in the Medical Anthropology program are united by a shared commitment to long-term ethnographic engagement with local cultural and social worlds, by a common concern with the practical relations between ethnographic research, medical knowledge, and public health policies, and finally by a common emphasis on the importance of social theory in medical anthropology.
The faculty works in close association with physicians and researchers at the Harvard Medical School and its Department of Social Medicine, as well as with public health practitioners at Harvard and in the community. While most of the anthropologists at Harvard deal in some way with these issues, the Medical Anthropology program is comprised of a group of faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students, divided between Anthropology and Social Medicine. This group meets once a week for guest lectures by some of the most preeminent thinkers in the field of medical anthropology. At Harvard, the program is directed by Arthur Kleinman, Rabb Professor of Medical Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, and Byron Good, Chair of the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
Center for International Development at Harvard University
http://www.cid.harvard.edu/
The mission of the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University is to advance human well-being and social progress in the developing world by expanding the understanding of development challenges and offering viable solutions to problems of global poverty. CID’s three goals are:
To build an interdisciplinary network at Harvard to analyze and address the challenges of developing societies.
To improve the effectiveness of international development policies and institutions.
To educate and train the next generation of leaders in development science and practice.
CID serves as Harvard’s primary center for research on international development. As a University-wide research center, CID draws upon faculty, staff, and researchers from the Kennedy School of Government, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the School of Public Health, the Medical School, the Graduate School of Education, the Graduate School of Design, the Law School, and the Business School.
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Southeast Asia Region
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/region/144/southeast_asia.html
The Belfer Center is the hub of the Harvard Kennedy School's research, teaching, and training in international security affairs, environmental and resource issues, and science and technology policy.
The Center's mission is to provide leadership in advancing policy-relevant knowledge about the most important challenges of international security and other critical issues where science, technology, environmental policy, and international affairs intersect.
The Center's leadership begins with the recognition of science and technology as driving forces transforming threats and opportunities in international affairs. The Center integrates insights of social scientists, natural scientists, technologists, and practitioners with experience in government, diplomacy, the military, and business to address critical issues.
East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/eals/history.html
The East Asian Legal Studies Program (EALS) is the United States’ oldest and most extensive academic program devoted to the study of the law and legal history of the nations and peoples of East Asia and their interaction with the United States. The program was created in 1965 in response to increasing interest among lawyers and scholars of international and comparative law in the legal cultures of China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia.
The Law School offers instruction on the legal systems of East Asia and sponsors in-depth research conducted by scholars in residence. Joint programs of study can also be arranged on an individual basis with other parts of Harvard University. An active extra-curricular program includes a lunchtime speaker series that combines lectures and discussions on Asian legal themes in an informal setting, a workshop series providing a more formal setting for the presentation of research projects, and foreign language discussion groups on legal issues.
Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/departments/population-and-international-health/
The Department of Population and International Health seeks to improve global health through education, research, and service from a population-based perspective.
The department's members generate knowledge and ideas through their research, strengthen technical and leadership skills through educational programs, and enhance national capacities through collaborative projects, especially in the developing world. In their examination of population and international health issues, department faculty members draw on their disciplinary expertise in many areas: anthropology, biostatistics, demography, ecology, economics, epidemiology, ethics, medicine, political science, reproductive biology, and sociology.
The department's research interests span a wide spectrum of topics, including social and economic development, health policy, and demography; design and financing of health care systems; women's health and children's health; prevention and control of infectious and chronic diseases; and geographic information systems (GIS). The department has a special concern with questions of health equity and human rights, particularly in relation to health and population issues in developing countries.
Vietnam Program, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/asia/vietnam.html
Since it was first established in 1988, the Vietnam Program at the Center for Business and Government has become one of the leading centers for the study of Vietnam’s economic reform process in the world. Through a combination of research, teaching and policy advising activities, the Vietnam Program has been able to make important contributions to the process of transition in Vietnam as well as the teaching of the economics of development at Harvard University. Prior to its 2000 incorporation into the Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School of Government, the Vietnam Program was a part of the Harvard Institute of International Development.