With National Science Foundation support, The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) will convene a meeting of U.S. and Iraqi social scientists in Amman, Jordan, to discuss opportunities for social science research in Iraq. The meeting will be organized by TAARII Executive Director, Dr. Stephanie Platz, with the assistance of TAARII Resident Director, Dr. Hala Fattah, and TAARII President, McGuire Gibson. Under current circumstances, U.S. researchers are unable to visit Iraq, while Iraqi scholars fear reprisals at home for their participation in research or training programs in the U.S. The conference, to be held on the neutral ground of a third country, aims to foster links for the development of concrete research plans that can be implemented as conditions permit.
Although the current situation in Iraq is too dangerous for the carrying out of conventional research, there is much in the transition to self-rule and the recovery from prolonged sanctions that demands urgent study, with ramifications for Iraq's own health and welfare policies, for U.S. policy, and for our improved understanding of matters ranging from democratization to the consequences of war for individual well-being. The meeting will convene historians, archeologists, public health experts, political scientists, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists from each country, to discuss future research prospects.
The specific focus will be the implementation of social science methods given existing infrastructure and resources. For example, what kinds of data are available to researchers in Iraq for use in the development of a sampling frame for a survey? What are the obstacles to designing epidemiological surveys with qualitative components in contemporary Iraq? How can partnerships with Iraqi co-investigators be forged? The conference will aim to assess the state of social science research in Iraq and to forge partnerships for future collaborative research.