Founded in 1948 with a focus on the social sciences, the Davis Center (originally the Russian Research Center) seeks to build knowledge of Russia and Eurasia and stimulate interdisciplinary thinking by creating opportunities for scholars at all stages in their academic careers. Current research fellows are exploring such issues as the effect of birth payments on fertility rates, citizenship policies in the new post-Soviet regions and states, informal economic strategies in Poland practiced by peasant-workers to survive economic transitions into and out of socialism, the history of plant cultivation in the region, and the role of trust in contemporary energy security.
The Davis Center is home to the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus, established in 1993 to strengthen research and teaching programs on this region through activities in all fields of social science and humanities, including course offerings, public seminars, a long-running study group, visiting scholars, information resources, curricular development, and research projects. The Davis Center includes a mission to develop and deliver resources and programming to educate the general public, specifically targeting K-12 educators, and is a co-sponsor of the Global Studies Outreach at Harvard collaboration, which has sponsored week-long summer workshops on water, global mapping, and global migration in the 21st century.