The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at UC Santa Barbara has long been a bastion of informative conferences on vital topics. Two significant grants will invigorate the center’s research mission and spark innovative collaborations across campus.

The center has received $240,000 ($200,000 of which is allocated for UCSB) from the Ford Foundation, and $175,000 from the Carnegie Corp. Paul Amar, Orfalea Center’s director, called the grants “a real vote of confidence.”

The Ford Foundation’s two-year grant, he said, will allow the center to focus on China’s overseas financial and infrastructural investments in South America, the Middle East and Africa. The co-principal investigators are Amar, Lisa Rofel of UC Santa Cruz and Petrus Liu of Boston University.

The Ford grant offers the center and its partners the opportunity to consider, Amar said, “the social, cultural, communications and media aspects of China’s ‘stepping out’ into the global south. China is now the No. 1 trading partner and investor in many countries in South America and primary geopolitical influencer in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

The Carnegie award, “Security in Context,” is a two-year grant to develop social justice-oriented security studies and inclusive research methods. Amar is the sole PI for the project. It will run alongside parallel grants to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the University of Oklahoma.

Charlie Hale, SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences, said the grants reflect Amar’s dedication to making the center a model of innovative global research.

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