Overview

The Social Change Workshop for Graduate Students is unique among academic conferences. One hundred and twenty-five students in top graduate programs from around the world spend a week on Brown University's celebrated campus hearing lectures from leading minds in the humanities and social sciences, presenting their own research, receiving advice and support, and forging new relationships.

The lectures at the Workshop touch on both methodological and substantive aspects of some of today's most pressing and difficult questions. Is social justice at odds with economic efficiency? Is institutional structure the key to prosperity? How does the study of cognition shape our understanding of interpersonal relations in society? Can we apply insights from cognitive science to design institutions that will optimize human well-being? Should evolutionary psychology change the way we do moral theory, economics, political science, and law?

But it's more than just a series of fascinating lectures. A typical day at the Social Change Workshop includes:

• Presentations by select students, who receive feedback on their research from other participants.
• Lively conversations over meals with faculty members and students from some of the best schools around the world.
• Small group discussions about the day's topics—from the relationship of democracy and economic growth to the kinds of equality worth having.
• Free time to explore the beautiful Brown University campus, charming Providence, or nearby Boston with new friends.

Students who have attended tell us they've never experienced anything quite like it.

We invite you to apply. 

	"We need to develop a much better understanding of how political institutions themselves work, and how they interplay with the economy. What the social sciences currently provide is a science of comparative statics. Where we have a huge lack is in understanding the dynamics of change. Our theories are essentially static. "Most of us in this room understand the elements needed for a good economy: clear and enforceable property rights, the rule of law, etc. But what we severely lack is a theory of social change. Our inability to understand the basic mechanisms of social change is evident in practical application. The disastrous programs of so-called transitional economies provide abundant evidence that we do not know how societies really change, and without that knowledge we have to admit that while we know what makes for a good economy, we don't actually know how to get good economies." - 2002 Social Change Workshop Faculty member, Douglass C. North Nobel Laureate and Spencer T. Olin Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington University, (from presentation at the International Society of New Institutional Economics annual meeting, 1999.)