In 2003, the Center of International Studies (CIS) (formerly a research program within the Woodrow Wilson School) and the University's Council on Regional Studies were merged, combining their strengths and activities to form a new institute, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). PIIRS, co-created by the University and the Woodrow Wilson School, promotes collaborative, interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching on issues of global importance and aims to integrate international and regional studies at the University into informed and coherent perspectives on global affairs. In the larger academic arena, PIIRS works to establish leadership in research on international and regional issues, creating links with leading universities worldwide to promote exchanges in these vital areas among faculty and students internationally.

The Institute also hosts World Politics, an internationally renowned quarterly journal of political science published by Johns Hopkins University Press and produced under the editorial sponsorship of PIIRS.

Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
Bendheim Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-1022
PH: 609-258-4851
FX: 609-258-3988
DIRECTOR: Miguel A. Centeno

Executive Committee: Jeremy I. Adelman, Nancy Bermeo, Anne C. Case, Miguel A. Centeno (ex officio), Martin C. Collcutt, Gene Grossman, Sükrü Hanioglu, Jeffrey I. Herbst, G. John Ikenberry, Harold James, Atul Kohli, Stephen Kotkin, Daniel I. Rubenstein, Michael Wachtel, and Anne-Marie Slaughter (ex officio)

Mission: Established in 2003 by the University and its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) promotes collaborative, interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching on issues of global importance. Combining the activities and strengths of the University’s former Center of International Studies and Council on Regional Studies, PIIRS aims to integrate international and regional studies at the University into informed and coherent perspectives on global affairs. In the larger academic arena, PIIRS works to establish leadership in research on international and regional issues, creating links with leading universities worldwide to promote exchanges in these vital areas among faculty and students internationally.

PIIRS encourages faculty and students from across the Princeton campus to engage in research and other activities that enhance the established curriculum. Through innovative research projects and a residential visiting fellows program, the Institute promotes exchanges across a variety of disciplines among scholars who focus on international relations and comparative and regional studies. Through its support of the development of an innovative curriculum, PIIRS seeks to provide every Princeton student with the opportunity to develop a critical understanding of the complex cultural and historical perspectives that operate in nations and regions across the globe. These offerings and activities are enhanced by annual conferences, lectures, and workshops on issues of global, regional, and cross-regional importance, sponsored by PIIRS alone or in collaboration with other programs and departments.

Integral to PIIRS and its mission are the over sixty-five faculty associates, drawn from numerous departments in the University. Additionally, approximately a dozen visiting fellows come to PIIRS each year to pursue their own research, to collaborate with associates, and to teach and lecture both in the classroom and in more public forums. Undergraduate and graduate fellows programs include students in a variety of PIIRS activities, putting particular emphasis on nurturing intellectual exchange with the faculty and on encouraging the fellows to participate directly in the functioning of the Institute by establishing their own projects.

Regional Programs:

•  African Studies
•  East Asian Studies
•  Contemporary European Politics and Society
•  French Studies
•  Hellenic Studies
•  Latin American Studies
•  Near Eastern Studies
•  Russian Studies
•  South Asian Studies
•  Institute for the Trans-regional study of the Contemporary Middle East, •  North Africa and Central Asia

Projects:

On Friday, April 9, the PIIRS Undergraduate Fellows Program, with support from the Global Issues Forum, will present a one-day symposium on Keeping the Dragon Aloft: Can a Rising China Overcome Internal and External Challenges in the 21st Century? This inaugural PIIRS Student and Faculty China Symposium will provide a look at contemporary China and the challenges this nation faces in the midst of its often-discussed but rarely explained rise on the international scene.

Symposium Program: On Friday, March 26, World Politics, a quarterly journal of international relations, will present a one-day conference on The Political Economy of Recurrent Debt, to be sponsored by PIIRS. This conference will consider three themes related to recurrent sovereign debt: (1) the demand for international capital by developing countries; (2) the regulation of the supply of that capital by both private investors and IFOs; and (3) the policy implications of the lending cycle and the periodic crises associated with it. This multifaceted approach will seek to facilitate a better understanding of the problem of recurrent debt, its causes, and potential solutions.

Conference Program: PIIRS seeks to integrate international and regional studies at the university into informed and coherent perspectives on global affairs. To that end, the State of the World Conference, to be held Friday and Saturday, February 13–14, in Dodds Auditorium and webcast simultaneously, will reflect that mission by looking at critical issue areas for global affairs through the eyes of both international and regional scholars. Among the topics of discussion will be the relationship between parallel increases in claims to ethnic uniqueness and pressures to conform to a common definition of human rights; the continuously complex relationship between growth and inequality; how local interests and perceptions conflict or mesh with global pressures; and developments in global security, the rise of the United States, and the apparent victory of classic liberalism over other ideologies.

Conference Program: In many advanced industrial democracies, the distinction between the Left and the Right has become increasingly blurrier, and on some issues the extremes on each side of the political spectrum have now more in common with each other than they do with the center. Public controversy has slowly shifted away from the traditional debate between capitalism and socialism as blueprints for economic and social progress, and the traditional cleavages that had structured domestic politics in the 20th century are giving way to, or at least are supplemented by, new divisions and alignments, mostly driven by questions of sovereignty and identity. This increased blurriness of partisan politics can be interpreted as resulting from structural change, such as demographic transformations, the rise of the middle class, and an increasing disillusionment with catch-all political parties. It can also be interpreted as the product of globalization, a phenomenon whose political implications have often been overlooked, but which has already impacted profoundly the configuration of domestic politics in many parts of the world. The Globalization and Domestic Politics Seminar examines how globalization alters some of the basic features of a country’s politics, including the relationship between state and individual, the expression of cultural identity, and the practice of democracy.

PIIRS is issuing a Call for Proposals: for Scholarly Project in International and Regional Studies. We seek proposals for innovative, interdisciplinary and multiyear projects dealing with global issues or intensive explorations of comparative or regional issues. We envision PIIRS as providing substantial support for long term projects of potential significance both to the research and teaching missions of the University and to the scholarly and policy worlds at large. Since this is the first year in which we will sponsor such projects, we are very open to a variety of methods and proposal.

International Networks Archive: Founded and directed by PIIRS Director Miguel A. Centeno, the International Networks Archive is a global coalition of scholars dedicated to studying the effects of Globalization on the world. INA is collecting vast amounts of data on many different topics, in the hopes of producing an "Historical Atlas of Globalization" that will span 2000 years. Another one of INA's main goals is to develop a non-geographic system of mapping our world, believing that such a system, based on things like telephone traffic and student migration, might be more meaningful than geographic distance in considering the state of the world today.

For more information: http://www.princeton.edu/~piirs/about/index.html

Note:  Use the "back" key in your browser to return to prior text
                              or
Click Top to return to the beginning of this page.