They have a dizzying array of names, familiar from lecture posters seen around campus. The nine research centers of the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), ranging from the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, offer the unique combination of academia and real-world study that is the Kennedy School's forte.

The KSG thrives on its connections to the real world of politics and public policy: students studying for their masters of public policy stream in from the professional world for two brief years of academics, and high-profile speakers visit almost daily to share their experiences with students.

These centers ground this busy KSG experience in solid research. The nine centers are like think tanks: they are diverse both in their subject of study and their methods of studying it. Some sponsor courses, others mainly fund faculty research or sponsor lectures. Sometimes, many of these are united under the same center.

Assistant director David E. Luberoff likes to describe the Taubman Center for State and Local Government as a loose confederacy.

"What ties us together is a variety of domestic policy issues and our interest in those," Luberoff says. "Mainly it's a group of like-minded scholars."

In differentiating his Taubman Center from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Government Department, Luberhoff high-lights the practicality and accessibility of the center's research.

"We are a bit more in contact with the actual work of government," Luberoff says.

They keep in touch with the real world in a number of ways. Several host fellows come for a year of academics and to share their work experiences with Harvard students. Others host weekly brown bag lunches with guests from the field. And all focus their research on current public debate.

"There is not much dust that settles on the center," says Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center. His center not only welcomes six fellows every semester, "journalists as well as scholars," but reaches out by participating in current debate.

"The world of journalism calls on us," Kalb says. "We seem to represent a non-partisan, serious appreciation to the world of journalism."

Just this week, for example, Kalb moderated a discussion on press coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal for the American Society of Newspaper Editors and will moderate one next week for newspaper publishers.

The focus of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has changed over time, according to Executive Director Richard A. Falkenrath.

"Under the Clinton administration global warming has been very important," Falkenrath says. Since the cold war ended, research has turned away from arms control to internal conflict, ethnic conflict, terrorism and Middle East and Asian security.

The Belfer Center is one of the oldest of KSG's research centers, founded in 1973. It is organized around four core programs--the International Security Program, the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project.

Rather than duplicating the work of academic departments, Falkenrath says that individuals have the opportunity to work with like-minded researchers in other centers and schools of the University. The Belfer Center's work on energy and the environment, for example, overlaps with initiatives at the Center for Business and Government.