A repository of links to sites I use in my research, mostly related to global public health or international relations in general.
General
- The CFR also publishes - and regularly updates - a very informative report on "The Global Health Regime", which covers the whole issue area, including the work of the Global Fund.
- "Global Public Health", the main academic journal on public health issues that also incorporates social science research.
Global Fund
- The Global Fund itself has an amazingly informative and transparent website. Detailed information about individual grants and disbursements, approved and rejected applications, Board meeting minutes, and much more.
- Aidspan is an independent, non-profit watchdog of the Global Fund. Publishes the very informative "Global Fund Observer" and a series of guides for applicants and implementers.
- AVERT has an overview of the Global Fund's structures and processes. Useful starting point for analysis.
Data and Statistics- The World Health Organization provides the most widely accepted statistics on diseases, mortality, and health status around the world.
- The WHO's "Global Health Observatory" offers a wealth of data in easily accessible formats (such as Excel files). Completely revamped and updated in 2011, now much more user-friendly.
- UNAIDS provides country fact sheets on the AIDS epidemic.
- The World Bank's data repository. Country-level time-series data on more than 1,200 different indicators is available, from economics to health, from science to education.
- The International Monetary Fund publishes useful time series data on economic and financial issues. Some content requires a subscription or institutional access.
- Excellent data on bilateral development aid (and a variety of other variables) can be found at the OECD data repository.
- The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington offers original datasets on population health.
- An initiative of several organizations in the UN system, devInfo is a system of databases that aims to consolidate the vast amounts of data generated by different UN agencies. Slick-looking, still un-intuitive and buggy, but potentially powerful.
- Datamarket is a new website aggregating publicly accessible data from a variety of other institutions (such as the UN and World Bank, but also from BP and FIFA). Looks slick, and with the addition of some more data might become a one-stop-shop.
- AidData.org is an amazing new tool to track all aspects of development finance. Always up-to-date, easily exportable data, intuitive interface - there's a lot to love.
- The Kaiser Family Foundation's information on "U.S. Global Health Policy". Regardless of the name, offers data on all aspects of global health (not just US-related), often with useful graphs and maps.
- The US provides a nicely transparent, graphics-driven overview of its foreign aid on the appropriately-named ForeignAssistance.gov.
Colleagues- Natalie Novick: women in politics, executive politics, cabinet selection.
- Justin Leinaweaver: global environmental policymaking, international treaties, US government and politics.
- Kevin Cunningham: electoral systems, European party politics, far-right parties, Irish politics.
- Julia Anna Matz: development micro-economics, household bargaining models, economics of marriage.
Blogs
- The Monkey Cage is the first place to go if I want to read up on excellent political science research and commentary.
- AidData is a terrific source in its own right, and their blog is both informative and well-written.
- While not all social science-related, the Guardian's Data Blog is a great source of ideas on what data to use in your research, or what to do with it.
- Foreign Policy's "Turtle Bay" blog reports on all things IR, with a focus on the United Nations.
- Yes, realists might count as an endangered species in certain parts, but Stephen Walt is still fun to read.
- The posts might often border on the whimsical, but Dan Drezner is great at mixing IR with pop references. Also the only IR blog to deal with the threat of zombies.
University
- The Department of Political Science at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, where I received my BA and MA. Note: some information on the site is not available in English.
Jobs
- The American Political Science Association's website has job listings, internship programs, and other resources relating to finding a job.
- The International Studies Association collects job openings in IR and closely related fields.
- PolSci Job Rumors is a discussion forum for academic job offers in political science and other aspects of making it in the real world. The general mood of the populace can be somewhat depressing.
- The IR Rumor Mill is much like the above, but with a focus on jobs in academic IR.
- The PolSci Jobs Wiki has current political science job listings and their progress, mostly in the US.
- IB-Liste is a (mostly) German-language mailing list on current job offers, scholarships, etc. in IR.
- GenevaJobs lists jobs in the international development sector in Geneva.
- DevNetJobs is an aggregator site and email newsletter for jobs and consulting opportunities in the international development sector. Paid subscription required.
Software- R is probably the most powerful free statistics software you will ever come across. R easily rivals what commercial software like Stata or SPSS can do.
- I write my papers in LaTeX using the excellent proTeXt distribution for Windows.
- Mendeley is a great (and free) reference and bibliography manager with such nifty features as automatic syncing across multiple computers, an iPhone app, a web interface for all your documents, and export to BibTeX.
- I like JabRef for quickly editing BibTeX bibliography files on the fly.
- I recommend LibreOffice for working on spreadsheets and the occasional non-LaTeX text file.
Staying Sane
- In grad school? PhD Comics helps you realize everyone has the same problems, and laugh at them.
- "The Big Picture" is a photo blog by the Boston Globe's photo editor. Amazing news pictures from all over the world, three times a week.
- BuzzFeed features the things you want to pass on to your friends - viral videos, pictures, gossip, and yes, geniune news.
- XKCD is the most entertaining nerd-centric webcomic with stick figures you will ever see. Period.
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