Social Scientists awarded 2020 OPEN Fellowships
Researchers from the Social Sciences Division are among those to have been awarded the 2020 Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) Fellowships, announced today.
Awarded annually to researchers with a passion for improving public policy, the OPEN Fellowships enable Oxford academics to work with local, regional, national and international policymakers to explore mutual interests, and to develop networks and other resources that generate benefits to research, policy and the wider world.
Meet the 2020 OPEN Fellows across the Social Sciences Division:
OPEN Fellow Dr Claire Cullen (Blavatnik School of Government) is partnering with Young 1ove Organization; a non-government organisation based in Botswana that connects youth to proven life-saving information in education and health. Together, they will support policymakers to rapidly scale-up and evaluate a 'low-tech' SMS and phone call intervention to stem children’s learning losses during COVID, and to build rigorous evidence-based policy systems.
Claire said, "This Fellowship is the dream opportunity to support an organisation that translates evidence into action, and is galvanising a movement of policymakers to do the same."
Public health in the UK and across the world is inherently linked to climate risks. Through his OPEN Fellowship, Dr Neven Fučkar (Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment) will work with the Climate Change and Health Group at Public Health England to develop and implement user-oriented metrics relevant for public health policy on adaptation and resilience building in current and future climate.
"This is an excellent opportunity to work on the connection of climate and human health for the benefit of resilience and adaptation in a changing climate", said Neven.
Through his OPEN Fellowship, Arvind Kurian Abraham, a specialist in constitutional law who has worked as Legislative Advisor to Members of Parliament of India and drafted several Bills, will collaborate with scholars at Oxford's Faculty of Law to identify policy and legal measures to address the inequalities exacerbated by COVID-19, with a view to informing comprehensive equality legislation in India.
