Solving Global Poverty

PLEASE NOTE: The SGPC has evolved into the Center on Global Poverty at Johns Hopkins University.

Mission Statement

The Solving Global Poverty Collaborative adopts a qualitative and problem-solving approach to global poverty. We are rooted in sociology, which means we focus on individuals within their social contexts, emphasizing the examination of causal mechanisms, processes, and narratives. We aim to work with academics, policy-makers and community practitioners to develop new strategies of poverty alleviation grounded in the systematic understanding of society. Our commitment to problem-solving entails a comprehensive exploration of poverty’s root causes, identification of potential solutions, and analysis of barriers to implementation of solutions. We advocate a strategic comparative analysis of successful and unsuccessful cases as one way to develop problem-solving initiatives. These initiatives may be of any scale and any level: incremental or revolutionary, from the neighborhood to the globe. We aim to establish a formal organizational presence at Johns Hopkins that connects and supports researchers aligned with this approach. Given the near certainty that global poverty will worsen in the future due to climate crisis, the time to move beyond descriptive qualitative work towards direct intervention is now.  

Please contact Monica Prasad (mprasad@jhu.edu) to join this group. For questions or suggestions regarding this website, please contact Daniela Campos (camposugaz@wisc.edu).

How to Get Involved

1) Sam Cohn (s-cohn@tamu.edu) is leading a group to organize virtual and in-person workshops and conferences to nurture research that adopts this approach.  Please contact him if you'd like to be involved in organizing these or in participating in them. Fill out a preliminary interest form for the spring workshops. 

2) Milena Aranciaba (ma4438@columbia.edu) is leading a group to work towards an edited volume.  Please contact her directly if you'd like to be involved.

3) Laura Adams (ladams@pactworld.org) is leading a group to consider how to disseminate our research to policymakers and broader audiences.  Please contact her if you'd like to be involved.

4) Monica Prasad (mprasad@jhu.edu) is leading a group to work towards building a program, center, or institute at Hopkins.  Please contact her if you'd like to be involved.  We hope to announce this at the fall 2024 DevSoc Conference.  

5) Rita Jalali (rita.jalali@gmail.com) will lead efforts to organize panels on this approach at the ASA 2025 conference.  Please contact her if you're interested.

6) We need volunteers for other things: planning a problem solving global poverty dinner for the group at ASA 2024; planning a problem solving global poverty dinner at ESS 2024; helping with emailing out updates to this group overall. Please contact Raka Sen (rakasen@sas.upenn.edu) if you'd like to be involved.