Prerna Singh, associate professor of political science, international and public affairs and behavioral and social sciences, has been awarded a Max Planck-Humboldt Medal for her research on social welfare policy. The medal is one of Germany’s most prestigious awards and aims to bring prominent research to the nation.
Each year, the Max Planck Society and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation select a scientist abroad to highlight their research and endow promising future work. The winner of the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, receives 1.5 million euros to be put toward research in Germany.
In years when the selection committee identifies more than one promising candidate, two additional candidates can be awarded the Max Planck-Humboldt Medal, which includes an 80,000 euro stipend. Honored with this medal, Singh will use the stipend to further her research on vaccine hesitancy in collaboration with the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the Robert Koch Institute, a German federal agency focused on public health.
Singh’s past research centered on analyzing the differences between Indian states to better understand what she calls “cooperative state-society relations,” or how well states and societies work together.
“I was trying to understand why within a single country, certain regions do a lot better than others, and the variation is dramatic,” Singh said in an interview with The Herald, pointing to indicators such as life expectancy or infant mortality.
Singh joined Brown in 2014 and published a book detailing her research, “How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India,” two years later. Soon after, she began her new project, which examines the impact of social factors on vaccine skepticism.
Vaccines are “safe, cost-effective and have been the single most important intervention to save lives,” Singh told The Herald. But people’s approaches to vaccination are not always rational, she explained, so it is important to recognize the social factors that may play a role in their hesitancy.
Singh continued her vaccine research throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which helped her realize how “urgent, important and necessary” her work was, she said.
“We know from social psychology that we are not strictly rational beings. We do things that contradict our own narrow self-interest all the time,” she said. Her research investigates whether it’s possible to devise guidelines that “tap into people’s emotional, cognitive (and) affective states” to encourage them to get vaccinated.
Singh learned of her nomination for the Max Plank-Humboldt Research Award at the beginning of 2024, but because the process is anonymous, she still does not know who nominated her.
After her nomination, Singh presented her work to the award selection committee in a competitive, multi-step process that included interviews and research presentations in Berlin.
But first, Singh had to submit an extensive research proposal and identify collaborators in Germany to work with. She identified several researchers at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center whose skillsets she thought complemented her research.
“I was really interested in trying to use experimental research to test insights that I was developing,” Singh said. In particular, she wanted to see if her understanding of vaccine hesitancy translated in contemporary contexts.
After the nomination process, Singh learned that she was a finalist and flew to Berlin, where she had the opportunity to meet other finalists. In early September, she was named a medal recipient.
“They were all excellent projects, so I feel really grateful and honored to have gotten the research medal,” Singh said.
“I’ve known Prerna since we both moved to Brown and Watson at roughly the same time a decade ago — she is a fantastic scholar who has thrived in the interdisciplinary environment that is at the heart of the Watson School,” wrote John Friedman, dean of the Watson School of International and Public Affairs, in an email to The Herald. “I’m just thrilled that Prerna has received this great honor, which will bring due attention to her outstanding work.”
Singh will be presented with her award in December at a ceremony in Berlin. But she is mostly looking forward to finishing her book manuscript detailing her research and spending time in Berlin, which she said may be her favorite city in the world.
Ian Ritter is a senior staff writer for university news. A junior studying chemistry, he covers the graduate schools & students and admissions & financial aid beats. When he isn’t at The Herald or exploding lab experiments, you can find him playing the clarinet, watching the Mets or eating Ratty carrot cake.
