The Pembroke Challenge

Read our feature story about Liz Sherman ’77 P’06 P’09 and her support of the Pembroke Center’s long tradition of research excellence.

Funding Research Initiatives that Address the Human Cost of Social Change

What are the unintended consequences of new health technologies for women and men?
Why do microloans often fail to help families escape poverty?
How has the Internet been accepted as a tool for free expression when it also invades privacy?

Since 1981, scholars at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women have studied compelling questions like these, advancing teaching across the humanities and social sciences with a focus on the human cost of social change. Researchers from around the world work with Brown faculty and students in a variety of forums: year-long research seminars, graduate and undergraduate courses, lecture series, and multi-year research initiatives.

Opening New Avenues of Research

Now, building on the tradition of the internationally-renowned Pembroke Seminar—an intensive one-year look at an intriguing topic led by a Brown faculty member for other faculty, post-docs, and select undergraduates—the Pembroke Center is seeking funding to endow three unique areas of study:

• Research Initiative on Gender, Medicine, and Science
• Research Initiative on Gender and Public Policy
• Research Initiative on Families and Workers on the Move

I am awed by the work of the scholars we support. This challenge will ensure that we continue to engage in research in exciting and groundbreaking areas. — Liz Sherman ’77 P’06 P’09

Within each broad category, requests for specific multi-year proposals will be solicited. The chosen proposal—broad enough to encourage dialogue yet narrow enough to produce tangible results—will result in a three-year initiative led by a Brown faculty member. The first year will follow the traditional Pembroke Seminar model, with the final years devoted to focused research and directed outcomes. Due to the interdisciplinary and international scope of the issues and researchers, new solutions—as well as new perspectives—are expected.  Endowed income will fund research, course-relief for Brown faculty, stipends for student researcher assistants, workgroups and symposia for collaborative exchange, publications, and conferences to disseminate research findings to wider scholarly and public audiences.

Challenging Our Community to Fund the Answers

The Pembroke Center Associates, the Pembroke Council, and the wider community who support the Center and honor the legacy of Pembroke College are asked to contribute toward establishing the work of these research initiatives. When the total reaches $750,000, Elizabeth (Liz) Munves Sherman ’77 P’06 P’09 and her husband Dave Sherman ’79 P’06 P’09 have pledged to contribute $250,000. Sherman is chair of the Pembroke Center Associates Council, the governing body of the Pembroke Center Associates, an organization of more than five hundred members that was founded in 1983 to help secure the academic and research programs of the Pembroke Center.

“With the endowment of these research initiatives, the Pembroke Center will be an important catalyst for new research at the frontiers of the humanities and social sciences.”
— Kay Warren, Tillinghast Professor of International Studies; Professor of Anthropology; Incoming Director, The Pembroke Center