Granfield, Hess receive Fulbrights
UB faculty members Robert Granfield and Daniel Hess have received Fulbright awards for the 2010-11 academic year.
They join sociologist Sampson Lee Blair as UB’s faculty Fulbright winners for 2010-11. Blair, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture and conduct research at Xavier University (Ateneo de Cagayan) on the island of Mindanao, the Philippines. His award was announced previously.
Granfield, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology, has been named the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in International Humanitarian Law at the Human Rights Research and Education Center (HRREC), University of Ottawa, Ontario.
HRREC is a premier center of intellectual activity in the area of human rights and is the oldest national university-based human rights institute in Canada.
Hess, associate professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture and Planning, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award to teach and conduct research at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, the only university of technology in that country and one of the three most important institutions of higher learning in Estonia. Founded in 1918, the university has 13,000 students, and campuses in Tartu, Kuressaare and Kohtla-Järve, as well as in the capital of Tallinn.
Granfield’s $25,000 Fulbright grant will fund his research during the fall 2010 semester into the evolving role of pro bono legal work in Canada, as well as in a global context.
Canada’s civil legal aid system is supported through state funding, but recently there has been an increase in voluntary pro bono legal services by private attorneys. Granfield will study the impact this development has had on the Canadian legal profession and on access to justice for its citizens. In addition, he will explore the international implications of the emerging global pro bono movement.
This research represents a continuation of his previous scholarly work and publications. In 2009, Granfield and co-editor Lynn Mather, UB political scientist and law professor, published “Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession" (Oxford University Press). The book examines the history, conditions, organization and strategies of pro bono lawyering, interrogates the public interest ideals of the legal profession and places these ideals in a broader social, economic and ideological context.
Central to Hess’ research, writing and teaching agenda are the questions of how urban policies affect travel choices and how urban spatial dynamics can best be analyzed methodologically. His work also focuses on access to employment for welfare recipients and low-income persons, and he has conducted evaluations of transportation policy and practice in California and New York.
Hess also is interested in transit system performance and alternative transit funding arrangements, and has conducted evaluations of transit-pass programs. He serves as a consultant to federal, state and local agencies, and recently was part of a team that explored design concepts and programs for adding transit-oriented development along Buffalo’s Metro Rail corridor.
A grant from the Mineta Transportation Institute funded his investigation of barriers to older adults riding traditional fixed-route transit systems. Another grant, from the Federal Transit Administration, funded his investigation of how public involvement can be used to expand alternative transportation financing schemes.
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