IAJS faculty grants support global, solutions-driven research
Associate Professor Krish Seetah's work will focus on the Chagos Islands.
To help communities thrive amid migration and change, Stanford’s Institute for Advancing Just Societies is supporting innovative faculty research and partnerships with seed grants of up to $25,000.
The first two seed grants, which were awarded for this academic year, reflect the institute’s priorities in different ways — and illustrate the global focus of its programming. IAJS is accepting additional proposals through November 23 for the 2025-26 academic year.
Daphne O. Martschenko, assistant professor of biomedical ethics at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, will study how population descriptors are used and understood in genomic research today.
Krish Seetah, associate professor of environmental social sciences, of oceans, of anthropology and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, is using the seed grant to study the repatriation and resettlement of the Chagossian people, who were forcibly removed from their homeland, the Chagos Islands, in the early 1970s.
“These seed grants are putting our money where our mouth is on solutions-focused research that is pragmatic and global. We want to support people who are doing bold and important research that is in its early stages and give them a boost to do that work,’ said Tomás R. Jiménez, IAJS Founding Faculty Co-Director, Institute for Advancing Just Societies, Professor of Sociology, School of Humanities and Sciences, Joan B. Ford Professor, and Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.
Daphne O. Martschenko
Martschenko’s research focuses on the ethical and social implications of three distinct population descriptors — race, ethnicity, and ancestry. These descriptors are often conflated with each other in genomic data collection and studies.
“Historically, we have seen real social harms come out of that conflation. There is growing recognition of the need to disentangle these descriptors from each other,” Martschenko said. “We need to include more perspectives in the conversation about the role and relevance of these population descriptors. Seed funding from IAJS is making this possible.”
Genomics research requires global collaboration, but guidelines and recommendations for how to responsibly use population descriptors reflect European and American standards. Martschenko’s grant will fund a pilot project that will explore the perspectives of genomic scientists and beneficiaries of genomic research in Africa so that they can be included in discussions about population descriptors and help drive decision-making.
Krish Seetah
Seetah is tackling an ecologically and geopolitically complex issue by focusing on cultural resources and community engagement among the Chagossian people.
A recent agreement, with important implications for the United States (which operates Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands), will transfer control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius from the United Kingdom. The U.K. kept control of the islands when Mauritius became independent in 1968 and under the agreement will continue to lease the island with the Diego Garcia facility.
Officials in London and Mauritius are working on plans that include the repatriation of the Chagossian people. Seetah has been selected to lead a working group focused on cultural knowledge and traditions.
He will use the grant to explore how Chagossians — who have significant communities in the U.K., Mauritius, and the Seychelles but have had limited access to the Chagos Islands to see what buildings or other artifacts are there — feel about their heritage. Using AI tools and eye-tracking technology, he will measure what cultural resources they are drawn to.
“IAJS is supporting the first independent, unique research on culture with the Chagossian community,” Seetah said. “We are exploring what aspects of their culture they want us to focus on.”
The project is part of a broader effort that includes identifying where on the islands communities can be resettled, given rising ocean levels — and how to build a local economy. The working group Seetah is chairing plans to produce a brief policy document on Chagossian cultural resources as part of a dossier to be submitted to the United Nations.