West Point Minerva Research Initiative
Beginning in 2010, the Office of the Secretary of Defense partnered with a range of Defense educational institutions to launch Minerva Research Fellow programs at select Joint Professional Military Education schools. Scholars accepted into Minerva Research Fellow faculty positions must investigate Minerva-relevant research topics and have a Ph.D. in social sciences or foreign area studies research, as well as a significant track record of research, teaching, academic presentation and publication exploring given topic area. The program is intended to build DoD in-house expertise in the social sciences by incorporating social science expertise into strategic levels of study and engagement across the Services and within the Department. Our projects support Minerva efforts to "seek to define and develop foundational knowledge about sources of present and future conflict with an eye toward better understanding of the political trajectories of key regions of the world" and to, "improve the ability of DoD to develop cutting-edge social science research, foreign area and interdisciplinary studies."
For more information, contact Kristine Ringler by phone: 845-938-7947, or email: Kristine.Ringler@usma.edu
See the the following for more information on DoD's Minerva Initiative:
http://minerva.dtic.mil/
http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html
Background on the West Point Minerva Research Fellows program
The United States Military Academy has been awarded two Minerva Chairs from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Our two research projects are entitled “Social, Spatial and Cultural Topologies of African Villages” in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering and "Understanding the Differences in the Islamic Ideology and in Asian Cultures" in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Both projects address the Minerva topic “New Approaches to Understanding Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation” and will be supported with cooperation of the Institute for Innovation and Development (IID) and the Network Science Center (NSC). Minerva will enhance our growing social science research and education initiatives and form a strong research team of Fellows, researchers, faculty members, and cadets. In addition to an Academy research team, social and behavioral scientists in the Army at ARO and ARI are connected to the USMA Minerva project -- supportive of our efforts and excited to work with our Fellows and research teams.