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Why is expertise that used to be authoritative now sometimes dismissed as “fake news”? Is it possible to save an endangered language by bringing a native speaker to Cornell to document it? And what does it mean to work in a Bosnian weapons factory when the source of one’s livelihood is lethal to others and the environment?

These are a few of the questions Cornell social sciences faculty are answering this spring, thanks to small grants from the  (ISS). The ISS’s  are designed to assist researchers as they develop new research and seek external funding.

With his grant, , the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, will organize a conference, “’”&�Բ�����;to analyze how knowledge claims are constructed and contested in public opinion, the media and political campaigns.

In the Department of City and Regional Planning, assistant professor  will be among the first to test the validity of the decades-old assumption that giving poor families cars can help them obtain jobs and move up the economic ladder.

, associate professor of applied economics and management, will research how people make privacy decisions about their digital personal data.  stems from a paradox that has confounded researchers in recent years: Individuals say they have strong preferences for privacy but their revealed preferences are actually weak.

, professor of linguistics, and , associate professor of Luso-Brazilian studies, will bring to campus a native speaker of the , the last living language of a family of languages known as "." Only 1,290 people still speak it. With this native speaker, they will record a body of spoken Bororo, including transcripts, a phonetic dictionary, models for the language, and data and hypotheses about linguistic phenomena in Bororo. At the request of the Bororo community, they will also begin to create a book to teach the language to children in the community and an updated dictionary. 

In a project titled “,”&�Բ�����; associate professor of anthropology and of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, will examine how people in a Bosnian town reckon with the lethal legacies of Igman, a weapons factory that provides employment in a country with one of the world’s highest unemployment rates. She will explore the workers’ experiences with health hazards, their critique of ecological destruction and their views on the lethal purposes of ammunition production.

Other projects include:

• “,”&�Բ�����;, associate professor of city and regional planning; , associate professor of development sociology; and , associate professor of anthropology;
• ,”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of finance;
• “,”&�Բ�����; professor of economics; and , the H.T. Warshow and Robert Irving Warshow Professor of Economics;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, associate professor of human development;
• “,”&�Բ�����; professor of history;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, associate professor of applied economics and management;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, the Lois and Mel Turkman Assistant Professor in the Division of Nutritional �鶹��Ƶ;
• “”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of communication;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of economics;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of communication;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of economics;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of government, and;
• “,”&�Բ�����;, assistant professor of development sociology.

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