I’ve been tossing around some ideas since the spring term about research adventures that might help me narrow down my dissertation topic. Unfortunately, academia moves at the speed of molasses sometimes, and delays that are out of my control have caused my side project to come to a halt. I am still hopeful that we’ll finish the paper eventually, but right now it’s on Pause.

I need to begin seriously paring down my ideas and formulating a dissertation topic. The problem is that I have too many interests! I am curious about the far-reaching impact of philanthropy, but my first foray into the subject didn’t provide the definitive results that I was hoping for. I was trying to see if private philanthropy played a role in driving public funding, but the example I used (Carnegie funding for U.S. libraries) was too disjointed to make a real connection. (Carnegie funding dried up, for the most part, in the early 1900s/teens, but federal funding didn’t begin until decades later, so it’s hard to say whether the former truly influenced the latter.)

I am interested in forecasting techniques and applying models from other disciplines (management, communication studies, etc.) to philanthropy — specifically, charitable giving in synthetic environments. I believe that we are on the cutting-edge of some really spectacular advances in social media types of technology, and philanthropy plays a role in that. It’s an under-researched area — which is challenging, on one hand, because there is little foundation, but it’s exciting, on the other hand, to think of playing a part in laying that foundation!