Boston Area Research Initiative

The Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) seeks to spur original research in the greater Boston area that is on the cutting edge of social science and policy.  Simultaneously and equally important, BARI seeks to forge active and mutually beneficial relationships between university researchers and the City of Boston, and eventually cities throughout the metropolitan area.

Still in its early stages, BARI was originally conceived as a research effort of the Social Science Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, but over time it grew to a more expansive collaboration with Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and key agencies in the city of Boston.  We view this collaboration as leveraging the unique aspects of each participating unit—BARI combines Radcliffe’s interest in supporting high-quality, policy-relevant research across the social sciences, the Rappaport Institute’s longstanding efforts to strengthen ties between Harvard and the City of Boston, and the city’s interest in using data and research to develop more effective policies to address a variety of important issues.  BARI’s organizers have focused on four primary strategies for achieving these goals: 

• Providing increased opportunities for scholars and students to work with public officials on a variety of concrete projects and thus to forge new relationships, primarily through support of internships and fellowships;
• Creating two-way “data pipelines” and mapping tools that give researchers access to sources of data on Boston in ways not heretofore possible and to give public officials greater access to academic analyses of these data;
• Identification of core intellectual questions that social scientists care deeply about (e.g., origins of violence, educational disparities; rapid technological changes in access to information) and that are also of direct policy concern, with the goal to integrate new streams of data with faculty interests in ways that will facilitate original research while at the same time bearing on practical relevance; and
• Developing collaborative mechanisms to bring together officials and researchers in nontraditional ways that ensure officials are aware of emerging research findings and researchers are aware of policymakers’ knowledge and can learn from policymakers’ experiences in working on these topics.   The major initial effort was a symposium held in the fall of 2011 at the Radcliffe Institute:

Click for symposium agenda:

See also:

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"When Town Meets Gown."  Harvard Gazette, October 27, 2011.

"Harvard and Boston" and "High-Tech Intersections."  Harvard Magazine, October 27, 2011.

"The City-University Connection."  NPR, November 14, 2011.