Generosity Helps Fuel Applied Research

Generous funding by an anonymous alumnus has accelerated the ILR School’s research on one of the biggest questions facing society: the future of work.

In boardrooms, classrooms and living rooms, people are grappling with a volatile work landscape. How will workers find jobs? How can they thrive?

ILR’s Future of Work Fellowship initiative grew out of the alumnus’ professional experience wrestling with the big questions around work. He was also committed to supporting ILR’s growing emphasis on applied research, a priority for Alex Colvin, Ph.D. ’99, the Kenneth F. Kahn ’69 Dean and Martin F. Scheinman ’75, MS ’76, Professor of Conflict Resolution.

By providing unrestricted funding, the alumnus created a flexible funding mechanism to enhance faculty-led research and created a pathway for additional philanthropic support.

“Future of Work Fellowship funding has provided faculty with rare opportunities to expand their research and its impact, leading to insights in economics, human resources, and research about labor and workers,” said ILR Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Diversity, and Faculty Development Kate Griffith, the Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor.

“The gift has allowed faculty to hire excellent researchers to advance studies that have academic and real-world impacts. The Future of Work fellows have engaged in many types of research, including quantitative data analysis, experiments and interviews,” she said.

Many of the Future of Work Fellowship postdocs remain part of the ILR academic ecosystem after moving on to other institutions to teach or conduct research.

Vanessa Bohns, the Braunstein Family Professor, said, “The ability to bring in postdocs is incredibly valued. They help run our labs; they really keep our experimental research going. Postdocs come in having five or six years of research training under their belts, so they can hit the ground running and make a big impact in the couple of years they’re here.”

“Each time one of them goes on to an academic job, we’re expanding our academic network. ILR offers a unique social justice and interdisciplinary perspective, and they bring that to the schools they end up in.”

Taking Research to the People

Labor economist Philipp Kircher, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Michèle Belot, the Frances Perkins Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, tapped Future of Work Fellowship funding to better understand the U.S. labor market – and to help job seekers understand it as well.

They built on an investigation they began 16 years ago in Scotland, researching what advice would best serve people looking for work. In Edinburgh, they provided information within a job search platform about alternative occupations based on how other similarly skilled individuals move between occupations. 

The researchers adapted their approach in the United States. They hired Bart de Koning as a Future of Work fellow to understand the competition for jobs in the U.S. labor market and to create a digital platform with tools for job seekers, including a way to compare themselves with others. As a result, over 2,500 New York state residents have used the Cornell Job Search Lab, part of ILR’s Labor Dynamics Institute.

The platform draws on publicly available data on job seekers, including education and experience, so participants can compare their own characteristics with those of a particular occupation. The idea is to address both overconfidence and too little confidence, and to enable more informed job search decisions. 

In the future, they aim to open the platform to the general public in New York state, Kircher said. It would provide information on occupational transitions and other relevant labor market information, as well as job search recommendations, so that job seekers have a better understanding of the environment they’re searching.

Learning Through Immigrant Workers

Youbin Kang worked with Griffith and Shannon Gleeson, the Edmund Ezra Day Professor, on research about the intersection of immigration enforcement and workers’ rights. They studied a government program designed to empower immigrant workers to report workplace abuses and cooperate with federal, state or local labor investigations without fear of immigration consequences. 

With Kang’s help, Griffith and Gleeson completed over 130 interviews with legal advocates and worker organizations; initial findings were presented at the Law and Society Association’s annual meeting in May. Kang is now a Moynihan Fellow at The City College of New York and an incoming assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hong Kong.

Building Community After the Pandemic

Professor Sarah Besky tapped Future of Work Fellowship funding to hire Hadia Akhtar Kahn to help build an academic community that would be “writing, thinking and doing together” in person after the isolation of Zoom dependency that lingered after the pandemic.

In addition to helping Besky facilitate the weekly writing workshop, Agrarian Studio, Akhtar Kahn helped organize two conferences on agrarian studies, climate change and the future of work.

“We brought together people who normally don’t talk to each other and created a conversation about labor and the environment for faculty, postdocs and graduate students across the interpretive social sciences and humanities,” Besky said. 

At a 2024 conference, participants workshopped manuscripts in progress in small groups. Some pieces have already been published, including Austin Zeiderman’s new book, “Artery: Racial Ecologies on Colombia’s Magdalena River.”

Collaborations Help Launch and Sustain Careers

Charlotte “Charlie” Townsend, who examines gender inequality, published multiple papers during her two Future of Work fellowship years.

“From ideas to publication, these research projects take years and years, so having this extra time as a postdoc is critical to publishing my work. More time and amazing feedback from faculty made a huge difference for me. The Future of Work postdoc has been an awesome experience,” she said.

“Being at ILR, where there’s so much overlap in research interests, is really beneficial. Everyone has sent me papers or great insights that have improved my work. A lot of nice community building happens in ILR, and I’ll continue to collaborate with people after I’ve left,” said Townsend, who is joining the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management faculty this year.

MC Mignault, now an assistant professor at ESCP Business School in Turin, Italy, is another Future of Work postdoc whose ILR time has led to an enduring relationship with the school.

“During my postdoc, thanks to the Future of Work fellowship, I advanced my program of research on social perception, collaborating most closely with Professor Vanessa Bohns to investigate how people underestimate their network value in first impressions, and the consequences of underestimating our value when we meet new people in professional contexts,” she said.

Mignault and Bohns found that when people underestimate their value, they are less comfortable asking for help and end up with fewer network ties in the long run. They also found an intervention to buffer against this pervasive underestimation problem – by inviting people to think about what they have to give to the people they meet, instead of what they have to gain.

“The fellowship enabled me to develop realistic networking events to test this paradigm for over 1,000 participants, including Cornell students and alumni,” Mignault said. “The fellowship also enabled me to nurture international collaborations to test the generalizability of this effect on a larger scale, with French entrepreneurs from low-income environments.”

Mignault’s research program’s insights are directly relevant to Cornell’s community and extend to the broader population. 

“In my current position, I have ongoing collaborations with Cornell faculty and graduate students, which have so far led me to come back to ILR every year over the last two years since I finished my postdoc.”

One alumnus’ gift to establish the Future of Work Fellowship Program has led to breakthroughs in applied research and ongoing connections to the ILR scholarly community. It has also attracted support from other donors, enabling the program’s continuation and expansion. 

ILR School leaders would welcome the opportunity to speak with others who are interested in supporting this priority.