SPIA in New Jersey Faculty Fellow Joe Krakora ’76 will receive the Charles J. Hollenbeck Award from the New Jersey Commission on Professionalism in the Law at a ceremony on June 12. The award recognizes members of New Jersey’s legal community who have demonstrated the highest standards of professionalism in practice. At Princeton SPIA, Krakora, who is New Jersey’s former Public Defender, is developing an original intervention at the intersection of academic theory and practice, leveraging research for public policymaking. 

“I am honored to have been selected for this award,” Krakora said. “Our legal system is adversarial by definition, but the practice of law should always be professional and not personal.”

Nolan McCarty, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton SPIA, has won the Mac Jewell Enduring Contribution Award for the article “The Ideological Mapping of State Legislatures,” which he co-published with Boris Shor, an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, in The American Political Science Review in 2011. The award, given by the State Politics & Policy section of the American Political Science Association, recognizes a piece of scholarly work on the subject of U.S. state politics or policy that was published at least 10 years ago and has made an enduring contribution to the literature.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Jewell Award. This recognition affirms the lasting relevance of our work on understanding the ideological landscape of state legislatures, a project that continues to shape how the study of political polarization and representation at the state level,” McCarty said.

In conjunction with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Princeton Sovereign Finance Lab hosted a side event to the spring World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings on April 23. A panel of researchers, civil society organizations, and members of the U.N. Expert Group on Debt met at the SPIA DC Center to discuss “Practical solutions to the financing for development impasse.” Moderating was Layna Mosley, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton SPIA and director of the Princeton Sovereign Finance Lab.

“This meeting offers the opportunity for cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral conversations regarding government finance in Global South countries. As governments grapple to finance development as well as to adapt to climate change, understanding better the domestic and international politics surrounding sovereign borrowing is fundamentally important,” Mosley said.

The side event followed the Lab’s second annual Politics of Sovereign Finance Conference, which brought together scholars from universities around the world, including Eduardo Bhatia, a John L Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and Visiting Lecturer in Public and International Affairs; members of various International Monetary Fund and World Bank divisions; national government officials; and private sector representatives. Topics discussed included the domestic politics related to sovereign borrowing; climate finance; debt sustainability metrics; geopolitics and access to credit; and the role of international financial institutions and private investors in addressing debt crises.