Recent Grants

Foundations and corporations provide key strategic support for Brandeis' educational, research and social missions. Browse the latest grants awarded to Brandeis faculty and staff below.

Spencer Foundation

PI: Derron Wallace, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education
Project: Policing for Safety in Schools? Exploring Black Youth's Experiences of Restorative Justice in New York

The Spencer Foundation has awarded a grant for this project focused on the racial inequality of student safety. This project aims to investigate and address critical issues related to student safety and racial disparities. Amidst debates about school safety, this project addresses the disproportionate impact of school-based policing on Black youth. It examines restorative justice as an alternative, focusing on how Black students experience and perceive these approaches in a New York City school. Recognizing the limitations of policing for Black students, the study aims to highlight the potential of restorative justice to reduce racial disparities in school discipline, decrease suspensions, and improve student-teacher interactions. This research will provide insights into the effectiveness of restorative justice, giving voice to Black youth perspectives and contributing to strategies that promote equity and safety in schools.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

PI: Siri Suh, Associate Professor of Sociology
Project: Into Women’s Hands

Into Women’s Hands/Entre Les Mains Des Femmes is a collaborative initiative funded by the Hewlett Foundation that brings together faculty and students from Brandeis University and Joseph Ki-Zerbo University, Sheikh Anta Diop University to conduct ethnographic research on misoprostol. This project aims to offer important information about misoprostol that statistical research does not, such as decision-making processes related to the purchase of misoprostol in health facilities and health systems in general; health workers' experiences with prescribing, storing, and using misoprostol; women's experiences and outcomes related to misoprostol; and the circulation and sale of misoprostol in formal and informal pharmaceutical markets.

Lumina Foundation

PI: Thomas Shapiro, Heller School
Project: Stalling Dreams: How Student Debt is Disrupting Life Chances and Widening the Racial Wealth Gap

In an effort to improve the accessibility of postsecondary education, Lumina Foundation funded the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity (IERE, formerly the Institute on Assets and Social Policy) to identify and highlight the needs of borrowers of color who take out loans to pay for school. Students who are Black, Hispanic, and Native American tend to have higher unmet financial need, incur more student loan debt, and struggle financially to stay in school, but relationships among wealth, debt, and student success look different across different communities of color. IERE, in partnership with other universities and organizations, will help state and federal policymakers to include people of color in building more nuanced systems for financing post-secondary education.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

PI: Karen Hansen, Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Project: Cascading Lives: Stories of Loss, Resilience, and Resistance

The Gates Foundation/Raikes Foundation-led Voices for Economic Opportunity Initiative selected Hansen’s project, making this the university’s first Gates Grand Challenge awardees. Alongside Nazli Kibria of Boston University, Hansen will gather and disseminate the life histories of people who have suffered economic decline, highlighting the dynamic and often unceasing nature of inequality. Hansen and Kibria will interview men and women from Massachusetts and Georgia who have experienced a shock—such as a familial, health-related, or occupational disruption—to assess the presence or absence of resources that may detour or accelerate the cascade.

Ford Foundation

PI: Anita Hill, Heller School
Project: Reimagining Equality for the 21st Century

In partnership with Collective Future Fund, the project advances Hill’s effort to develop social policies that combat systems, structures, and cultures that support multiple forms of inequality. She will develop an interdisciplinary curriculum that illuminates historic inequalities around the globe and a documentary play targeting workplace inequalities based on first- and second-hand accounts of workplace sexual harassment and violence. Professor Hill also secured a major grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to undertake “Elevating With Urgency the Public Discussion of Gender-Based Violence in 2020”.

Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation

PI: Shantanu Jadhav, Psychology and Neuroscience
Project: Neural Coordination Mechanisms for Memory Function and Dysfunction

The Odyssey Program (managed by Health Research in Action) enables innovative pre-tenure researchers to pursue high-risk, high-reward pilot projects in biomedical science. Jadhav’s project aims to understand at the molecular and cellular level how the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex coordinate with one another in the formation of memories, and to develop new techniques to remedy cognitive dysfunction by restoring that coordination.

Alphawood Foundation

PI: Charles Golden, Anthropology
Project: Piedras Negras and Sak T’Zi: Conflict, Détente, and Economy in the Western Maya Lowlands

The foundation awarded a generous grant to support archaeological excavations, epigraphic research, and regional surveying in and around the sites of Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and Lacanja-Tzeltal, Mexico. The work will clarify details of the Classic period (ninth century AD) of Maya politics and economies through a comparative study of these neighboring, often competing, kingdoms of the Usumacinta River basin. Professor Golden is exploring how, as the kingdoms expanded, trust among polities broke down and Mayan dynasties failed. The model may be applicable in other cultural contexts where emergent states contend with the challenges of maintaining coherence across expanding territory.

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