Current Openings

Research Opportunities for Honors Students

Option to Receive Academic Credit

If offered, students have the option to receive academic credit for a research assistantship by submitting an Honors Contract by the designated academic term deadline. For more information please visit our Honors Contract FAQ page.

Open Positions

Please Note: Positions are sorted by faculty home department. You do not need to have a major or minor in their department or school to apply unless specified otherwise in position description.

RA Position Descriptions

Professor: Ronald Spector

Department: History

Research Title: The Farthest Front: Americans in the China-Burma_India Theater in World War II

Description: In 1971 Barbara W. Tuchman published Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945. The book soon became a bestseller and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Despite its title, the book’s discussion of the “American experience” was largely confined to a narrative and analysis of General Joseph Stilwell’s tour of duty as the top U.S. commander in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. Stilwell also served as Chief of Staff to Chinese premier Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, administrator of Lend -Lease and sometimes commanded Chinese troops as well. Read full description here!

Research Assistant Duties: The student research assistant will be asked to work mainly at the Library of Congresson locating and evaluating periodical articles and oral histories relating to this project.

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Spector ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Annie Liontas

Department: English/Creative Writing

Research Title: Student Social Media Liaisons for The Gloss Interview Series & Lit Friends: A Podcast

Description: This project in Creative Writing invites student social media liaison(s) to expand and promote The Gloss Interview Series (http://www.annieliontas.com/gloss), and to assist in the development of Lit Friends, a new podcast series that focuses on friendship and literacy citizenship in the writing community. Students conduct research, pitch series/segments, develop content for Instagram and other platforms, and engage in web/profile design. The role encourages autonomy, creativity, and collaboration.

Research Assistant Duties: Student social media liaisons develop/post/design weekly social media content for The Gloss Interview Series. Students with experience or expertise in design and various social media platforms are especially encouraged to apply. Additionally, students will conduct research on the history of friendship & famous/infamous literary friendships, and during development, envision new potential segments/series for the podcast.

There is a potential to extend the position into summer 2023, particularly if students are interested in/experienced with sound editing and production.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Liontas ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Remi Jedwab

Department: Economics & International Affairs

Research Title: Climate Change, Water Scarcity, Inequality in Water Access, and Conflict in Africa

Description: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is one of the most water-scarce regions of the world, and climate change is accentuating water scarcity by reducing rainfall in already rain-scarce areas. In that context, SSA increasingly needs to rely on groundwater for its water needs. Groundwater is then abundant in much of SSA. When groundwater is not too deep (less than 50 m deep), it can be accessed via traditional hand-dug wells or boreholes equipped with hand pumps. When it is deeper, modern pump technologies must be used. Since groundwater depth varies locally, and since modern pump technologies are expensive, within a same arid or semi-arid region one can often observe high levels of inter-communal inequality in terms of access to groundwater. With climate change and reduced rainfall, water is becoming a scarce resource, which should accentuate the human pressure on areas better endowed with groundwater access, and as such militarization and violence there.

The aim of this study will be to empirically investigate how climate change may have impacted the relationship between rainfall, water scarcity, inequality in groundwater access, and conflict between and within communities, focusing on the 20 or so SSA countries with arid and semi-arid regions in them. Policy-wise, we will discuss how improving groundwater access and reducing spatial inequality in groundwater access may help attenuate the relationship between climate change and conflict in SSA, and promote economic development more generally.

Using panel data at a localized level, we will investigate how regional and/or local climate change disproportionately affects conflict when there is both limited overall access to groundwater as well as inter-communal inequality in this access. As such, for our empirical analysis we need to compile localized data on (i) climate change, (ii) conflict, and (iii)
groundwater access.

Policy-wise, the analysis will help us better understand the relationship between water access and conflict, and thus contribute to our knowledge of the mechanisms by which climate change will impact SSA in the future, as well as the large economic costs associated with climate change (since conflict shocks and conflict traps have been shown to have dramatic economic effects).

Water access should reduce conflict if incomes, and thus the opportunity cost of engaging in conflict, increase. But in a context of water scarcity, conflict should increase in water-abundant communities. This should help us predict the future “hotspots” of (water-related) conflict in SSA.

The analysis will highlight the importance of improving groundwater access. By also studying where wells are located today and were located over time, it will also help the World Bank and its government clients better understand their rural water infrastructure needs. It may also help the policy community by highlighting how there may be commonalities across countries within a same region, or even across regions (such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa or Southern Africa). By better linking data on physical scarcity – when groundwater is scarce and/or too deep – and economic scarcity – when there is groundwater but technologies and investments are “missing” -, we also aim to inform the policy community on the economic opportunities that are missed.

Finally, an important possible implication of our results may be that improving groundwater access must be done in a way that inter-communal inequality is not reinforced. Otherwise, improving groundwater access in a region could paradoxically lead to more conflict, since militarily controlling some locations may increase the economic “prize” from engaging in conflict.

Research Assistant Duties: This is a GWU-led research project that is being implemented jointly with the Africa department of the World Bank and their main flagship report. The goal is to have a first presentation of the results at the World Bank in March 2023 and a first draft in April-May 2023 that would eventually become a World Bank publication.

We are preferably looking for a student who has some basic GIS skills (ArcGIS, QGIS, Mapinfo, etc.) and can help with creating spatialized data, for example data on groundwater depth, wells, the use of water pumps, etc. If the student does NOT have GIS skills, we may decide to train the student how to use such softwares for the tasks that need to be implemented. It is really not complicated but a bit time-consuming.

We will also need the student to find qualitative evidence (in books, articles, government reports, etc.) on how groundwater is being accessed and how groundwater impacts economic development locally in various parts of Africa. We are trying to understand the relationship between water scarcity and conflict, for example to what extent armed groups try to control wells in water-scarce regions. We would for example need the students to find some detailed information on such cases, find and provide citations, etc.

Finally, if the student also has some basic econometric skills, we may ask the students to create some econometric data for us. However, that is fine is the student has never used Stata or R. And I have another projects for which I may need some help, for example to input data into excel files or do some analysis.

I indicated 5-7 hours below. That might be or less depending on the week. I know that there are periods when the student will have to focus on their midterm and final exams and other assignments. We will be flexible but the main part of the project will be between January and March. If you are only interested in 3-5 hours, please let me know as well and we can discuss.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Jedwab ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Kerric Harvey

Department: School of Media & Public Affairs

Research Title: Working with a School of Media and Public Affairs/Film Studies professor in on-going research on slavery-related buildings and locations in
Washington, D.C. that are currently unacknowledged in any public way.

Description: Undergraduate Research Assistant (R.A.) Position Available working with a School of Media and Public Affairs/Film Studies professor in on-going research on slavery-related buildings and locations in Washington, D.C. that are currently unacknowledged in any public way. Research is in association with a Spring 2022 Honors Program course that focuses on ways in which to rectify the continuing invisibilization of key places in Washingtons landscape that played important roles in the city's long and complicated relationship with slavery. Duties include conducting both primary and secondary source research, interviewing relevant persons in the D.C. government as well as the area’s cultural community, combing city and regional archives, collaborating with experts at the National Building Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and other city landmark museums and libraries, field work in a variety of municipal settings, some of which may include open land (deserted agricultural properties, abandoned commercial buildings, and so on), clerical work as needed, preparation of teaching and presentation materials, and acting as a liaison with the D.C. City Government as events demand.

Research Assistant Duties: Excellent writing, speaking, and knowledge discovery skills are required, as is confident familiarity with research methods such as historiography, ethnography, material studies, cultural anthropology, and research in support of documentary film or radio production. A strong showing in any GW based research methods class is highly useful in support of the successful candidate’s ability to meet these criteria. Access to a car is desirable but not completely necessary. In-person interviews will be part of the selection process. Attendance in the Honors class itself is a required component of the Research Assistant position.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: Available for (3) credits during the Spring 2023 semester. Interested candidates should submit their resume, a short (3-5 page) academic writing sample, an unofficial transcript, and a one-page Letter of interest to [email protected], no later than 12 noon on Thursday, January 26, 2023. Application dossiers may be submitted online as email attachments; please do not use Google-share or similar platforms to submit your materials. Interviews will be held in the first two weeks of February.

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Kerric Harvey ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Eric Schluessel

Department: History

Research Title: Xinjiang's Muslim Uprisings: A Biographical and Geographical Index

Description: The Muslim uprisings of 1864–1877 were a pivotal period in the history of the Uyghur region (Xinjiang, Chinese Central Asia). However, they remain poorly understood, and there are no reference materials to help newcomers find their way through the conflicts' complexities. This project is creating a biographical index of people who lived during and participated in the violence, as well as a geographical index of the many obscure places where, for example, battles took place. So far, about 750 unique entries have been created. There is much more information to incorporate from diverse primary sources across several languages.

Research Assistant Duties: 1. Seek out new information from English-language sources (digital and print) under Prof. Schluessel's direction. Sources include translated materials and mostly British intelligence documents. 2. Incorporate Prof. Schluessel's written notes into new biographical and geographical entries through Google Docs. You will be provided with many
examples to work from. (3. If the student has Russian or Chinese language skills, they may be asked to use documents in those languages. However, Russian or Chinese is not required.)

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Schluessel ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Andrew Thompson

Department: Political Science

Research Title: 2022 Midterm election exit polling

Description: This project will evaluate voters' attitudes across a number of dimensions within the 2022 Midterm elections. It primarily uses exit polls as a means of assessing voters' views about politics, and will encompass local Maryland and Virginia counties. The major goal is to capture the most important issues to voters in local communities.

Research Assistant Duties: Students will be assigned to a research team that will coordinate together over the early voting period and on election day. Students will communicate with voters exiting their polling place and ask voters to fill out a study about their views. Upon completion of this data collection, students will then clean these data for analysis.

Number of openings: 6

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Thompson ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Paula Alonso

Department: History and International Affairs

Research Title: A Concise History of Argentina

Description: I am currently writing a book (under-contract) on the History of Argentina until the present day centered on the country's history of democracy (and its challenges).
At the moment I am working on the period between 1946 to 2000 that covers topics such as the rise of Juan Domingo and Eva Perón to power, military dictatorships (1955-1976); guerrilla organizations, State Terror, Human Rights violations and Transition to Democracy.

Research Assistant Duties: Bibliographical searches; summary of readings on certain topics; and literature reviews. Most of the literature is in Spanish, so reading (not speaking) Spanish skills are required.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Alonso ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Adam Dean

Department: Political Science

Research Title: Labor Unions and COVID-19

Description: One million people in the United States have now died from COVID-19. The pandemic has an especially large impact in nursing homes, with nursing home resident and staff deaths accounting for a fifth of all COVID-19 deaths to date. A robust body of research has linked nursing home COVID-19 infection and mortality rates to workplace conditions, with worse outcomes in facilities with staff shortages, a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), low staff vaccination rates, and staff that work in multiple facilities. Workplace safety has significant implications for health equity, given that wages for nursing home staff are low relative to other health care occupations and that Black and Hispanic women are overrepresented among nursing home staff.

Unions have long advocated for safer working conditions, and recent research shows that unions increased the rate of OSHA inspections before the pandemic. There is now emerging evidence that labor unions have continued to improve workplace safety during the pandemic by securing the policies and practices that reduce the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic. However, there has been little research to date on how unions impact worker injury and COVID-19 infection rates, or on the mechanisms that may link unions to these improved outcomes. Similarly, we know very little about how such union “health premiums” may vary across racial demographics and political partisanship.

This project addresses these critical gaps with two innovations. First, we will build a unique, proprietary dataset on the union status of all 15,000 nursing homes in the United States. Second, we will use quasi-experimental methods to estimate the causal effects of unionization on workplace safety, as well as how the benefits of unionization vary by race and partisanship. To provide a broader picture of the role of unions in workplace safety, we will examine worker health and injury outcomes both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we will examine the relationship between labor unions and workplace safety in US hospitals.

Research Assistant Duties: Research assistants will help to gather new data and produce literature reviews on labor unions and workplace safety. Basic knowledge of statistical software, such as R or Stata, is desirable but not required.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Dean ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: James Lebovic

Department: Political Science

Research Title: The United States at War: From Korea to Afghanistan

Description: I’m seeking a capable research assistant to help me conduct research on my new book related to the conduct of US combat in the four major wars of the post-World War II era—the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars. The book includes chapters on the origins of these wars, the collection and assessment of intelligence information, the escalation and de-escalation of these conflicts, and the withdrawal of US forces from these conflicts.

Research Assistant Duties: I’m looking specifically for a research assistant who can acquire research materials related specifically to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I’m open to other contributions on this project depending on the interests, knowledge, and capabilities of the student.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Lebovic ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Sharon Wolchik

Department: PSC

Research Title: Women Under Communism

Description: Updating a MS on the status of women under communism. Help finding data and organizing materials, Literature search and abstracting.

Research Assistant Duties: See above

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Wolchik ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Jasmine Smith

Department: Political Science

Research Title: Democratization in America: The Effect of Democratic Expansion on Black Turnout and Black Representation

Description: Policies aimed at democratic expansion and Black political participation are necessary conditions for Black officeholding to emerge in the Untied States. We examine Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act to understand how large federal interventions aimed at ensuring Black voters’ access to the ballot translate into Black officeholding. In both political periods we find that policies aimed at democratization and active political participation are necessary preconditions for black officeholding to occur. Our works helps contextualize scholarship on descriptive representation by illuminating this critical link between turnout and descriptive representation. Ultimately, we conclude that Black officeholders do not succeed electorally without active democratic protections for Black voters.

Research Assistant Duties: Research assistant duties for this project include making the dataset for Black officeholders in the South in the post Voting Rights Act era. Research assistants will take information from a scanned PDF file and transfer them to an excel document. The end result will be a dataset of Black officeholders in the South from 1969 to 1993.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Smith ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Melani McAlister

Department: American Studies

Research Title: Performing Solidarity: The US Market for Third World Culture in the Late Cold War

Description: This project examines how cultural products from Africa and the Middle East were circulated in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, in order to explore how "solidarity" was constructed and contested in the cultural realm.

Research Assistant Duties: I am looking for someone to help with research in newspapers and magazines, looking for coverage of artists such as Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, writers Nadine Gordimer and Isabel Allende, and Lebanese oud player Marcel Khalife.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor McAlister ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Howie Huang

Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research Title: Machine Learning for Fraud Detection

Description: This project aims to investigate the latest machine learning techniques with the goal of applying them to detect frauds in various financial activities such as credit card transactions, financial statements, cryptocurrency, etc. The ideal candidates should possess very strong background and experience in mathematics and computer programming (e.g., Python).

Research Assistant Duties: The research assistant will assist in literature survey, data preparation, evaluation, as well as report writing.

Number of openings: 3

Average weekly time commitment: 7+ hours

Credit hour option*: 4 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Huang ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Mary Beth Stein

Department: RGSLL (German)

Research Title: Before and After the Wall: East German Life Histories

Description: My research on the life history of East Germans is a book project that examines how the fall of the Wall and access to Stasi files has impacted people's understanding of their lived experience and the country in which they grew up.

Research Assistant Duties: I would like a research assistant help with library and internet research on the subject of East Germans since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The student would compile an annotated bibliography of works that have appeared since 2015 and assist in creating narrative summaries of life history narratives that I have recorded. Much of this
material has been translated, but some knowledge of German is required. A second task would be to assist in organizing an exhibition about East German Literary Culture at GWU. This would involve various research-related as well as creative tasks and organizational responsibilities.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Stein ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Samuel Ledermann

Department: ESIA

Research Title: Theory of spatial adoption in geography [literature review
for proposal writing]

Description: This research project is to develop a literature review of spatial adoption in the geography discipline (mainly), for the purpose of submitting a funding proposal in January 2024 on a project undertaken in Tanzania on sustainable agriculture (collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (https://www.iita.org/about/). The goal of
the ultimate research, if funded, is to understand the potential for knowledge-intensive agriculture to address both poverty and inequality.

The professor's knowledge of the theoretical literature stops circa 2012 and hasn't been followed closely. As a result, the search would focus on understanding where the cutting-edge of current writing on the topic is located.

An annotated bibliography or max. 10 page literature review would be the final output from the work.

Research Assistant Duties:

- undertake systematic searches of literature using GW Library
- manage reference list in Endnote 20
- synthesize findings (in a max. 10 page literature review or annotated bibliography)
- first draft completed by mid-November

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Ledermann ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Matthew Rau

Department: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Research Title: Stretching biological ocean particles with fluid shear

Description: There is currently a big gap in our knowledge of how particulate matter in the ocean forms and is then transported around the globe. Most particulate matter in the ocean is biological in origin and includes phytoplankton cells, extracellular polymeric substances, and other organic detritus. These particles, which are anywhere from single microns to many
millimeters in size, play a huge role in the carbon cycle. Our ability to predict carbon dioxide uptake by the global oceans depends on a robust understanding of the transport of these particles, which are generally very fragile and difficult to study. We are characterizing the properties of these ocean particles using a variety of fluid mechanics experiments and optical
measurement techniques previously developed by Dr. Rau and his research team. In this project, we hope to start two new experimental efforts where we expose lab-grown particles to precisely-controlled laminar shear and turbulence. The outcomes of this project will allow us to measure the fragile physical and fluid-like properties of these particles, which will improve our modeling capabilities of their behavior in the real ocean environment.

Research Assistant Duties: Research assistants will design, build, characterize, and test experimental facilities to conduct these measurements. Duties could include background research on fluid mechanics fundamentals, computer-aided design, machining and other hands-on fabrication, acquiring data using high-speed cameras and lasers, image analysis, python or matlab
coding, and image analysis. Specific duties will depend on the state of the project and interest of the research assistant.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Rau ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Samuel Ledermann

Department: ESIA

Research Title: How the global pandemic effected sustainable investing

Description: Building upon an incomplete working paper that hypothesized the impacts of the global pandemic on sustainable investing (titled "A New Normal: Effects of COVID-19 on Impact Investments in Healthcare and Agriculture), this research will use secondary data sources (e.g., from CSAF; https://data.csaf.org/data-table) to analyze the relationship between the
pandemic and changes of impact investing on the agricultural sector. A preliminary analysis has started, but yet to be completed. The research assistant's work will be acknowledged in a potential journal article, and depending on work provided, include an offer for co-authorship. No prior knowledge in agriculture or finance is needed.

Research Assistant Duties: - Complete update, gathering and cleaning of dataset (https://data.csaf.org/data-table)
- Investigate additional datasets available
- Run descriptive statistics and regression analyses (using STATA)
- Present/visualize findings using Tableau
- Co-write results/findings section of paper
- Time commitment can be flexible, between 1 credit (1-3 hours/week) up to a maximum of 3 credits/5-7 hours

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Ledermann ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: William Youmans

Department: SMPA

Research Title: Digitizing Arab-American TV

Description: Arab-American TV was a bilingual TV program that aired out of Los Angeles from 1980 to 2005. I am digitizing its video collection and creating a searchable catalog that lists the topics, who appears in the video and other data. The catalog and the videos will be made public for researchers, journalists and anyone else who may be interested to use. The
collection is a contribution because it covers many important community events, and features newsmakers from the Arab world and beyond.

Research Assistant Duties: The research assistant watches videos and analyzes them to cull data. They complete the fields that are in the catalog. There could also be simple video editing work if the RA is interested. The ideal RA understands Arabic, modern standard. This project will also expose RAs to colloquial Arabic as well.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Youmans ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Olivia Bullock

Department: Organizational Sciences and Communication

Research Title: Improving public acceptance of nuclear power

Description: The purpose of this project is to investigate how different messages about nuclear power adoption are more or less persuasive with different audiences. The study will draw on construal level theory to examine whether presenting the more concrete, immediate benefits of nuclear power are more persuasive than presenting long term and more abstract benefits and harms. This project will manifest in an online experiment.

Research Assistant Duties: The research assistant will help with an initial literature review, finding scales and developing the survey instrument, and cleaning data, as desired. There are also opportunities for writing as desired.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Bullock ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Eric Grynaviski

Department: Political Science

Research Title: English Social Networks

Description: This project examines social networks in Anglo-Saxon England. We are in the process of developing a database of all social relations in Anglo-Saxon England in order to test theories of society and state formation. The benefit of this period is that there are accessible datasets and historical sources that summarize all social relations (real and imagined) during the period. This would be fun for students interested in political science or history, as well as students in data science or computer science.

Research Assistant Duties: The hours are variable depending on student availability. To start with, students would compare a table against an online dataset to examine it for accuracy. This table was "scrapped" from the online dataset and the webscraping process introduced errors.

For student who are familiar with historical sources, they will use prosoprographical sources to draw connections between historical figures and see how professional historians do this type of work. Students in computer science or data science are likely to learn something about complex webscrapping operations. The emphasis will be different depending on the type
of student.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Grynaviski ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Annie Liontas

Department: English/Creative Writing

Research Title: The Gloss Interview Series

Description: Student will serve as a social media liaison for The Gloss, an interview series hosting women and LGBTQNB creative writers. Students will conduct independent research to promote outreach and engagement with writers, the literary community, the publishing industry, and help gain followers.

Research Assistant Duties: Social Media Liaison. Student will create posts and stories via Instagram and Twitter via Buffer,as well as conduct research on featured writers. Student will also generate new ideas and conduct independent research to create additional runs and online engagement. The position encourages creativity, autonomy, and innovation, as well as the curation of several socials and sites. An inclination towards design and aesthetic is appreciated, as is knowledge of various social platforms.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Liontas ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Daina Eglitis

Department: Sociology/ESIA

Research Title: Silences of Memory: Women's Experiences of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe

Description: This advanced book project highlights women’s experiences of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. It emphasizes the telling of historical episodes from women’s perspectives by using testimonies and other oral histories, published and unpublished memoirs, and similar documents. The book includes chapters on women volunteers in the Red Army in World War II, Jewish girls and women in the Nazi ghettos of the occupied Baltic countries, Liberator violence against Jewish women survivors of camps and death marches in Eastern Europe, and stories of the war’s end in the region and the struggle to return to home and family.

Research Assistant Duties: I am seeking 1-2 research assistants to support a book project in its late stages. Some knowledge of World War II in Europe and the Holocaust are very desirable, but curiosity and enthusiasm to learn are also of value. Key tasks include the following:
- Listening to/watching/reading Holocaust survivor testimonies from online databases to gather information on relevant topics,
- Advanced listening knowledge of Russian or Hebrew is highly desirable. Listening knowledge of other East European languages is also helpful, particularly Hungarian, Lithuanian, or Polish.
- Locating and summarizing published materials in English on assigned topics,
- Support with checking references.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Eglitis ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: David Shambaugh

Department: Political Science/Elliott School

Research Title: The Unravelling: How America Turned Against China

Description: My book project investigates the seismic shift in American attitudes and policies towards China over the past decade--from cooperative "engagement" to one of disenchantment, antagonism, and comprehensive rivalry. The project investigates why and how this shift has occurred in the United States, its durability, and its implications for US foreign policy, US-China relations, and world order.

Research Assistant Duties: I am looking for two RA's: one with native Chinese (PRC) language skills who is able to read, translate, and summarize Chinese media and reports (simplified characters) about the United States; and one student knowledgeable about American Politics. For the second RA, I prefer someone very knowledgeable about (a) Congressional legislation and voting concerning China, and (b) governors and state relations with China.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Shambaugh ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Alexa Alice Joubin

Department: English and Honors Program

Research Title: Inclusive Shakespeare and Why It Matters

Description: In the era of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeTo, how do we engage with classical texts that are traditionally associated with colonial and patriarchal practices? Through the lenses of critical race and gender theories, this book de-colonizes the ways in which people habitually interpret Shakespeare’s plays. The chapters focus on racialized bodies, performance of gender and sexuality, disability narratives, feminist interventions, class struggle, and intersectional identities. The recent social justice turn in the arts has given relevance and
purpose to art. Emotional investment in a story spurs people into action, and it is validating and encouraging for audiences to see themselves represented
on screen. This book demonstrates the application of strategies for global inclusiveness to Shakespeare studies in the classroom and suggests that we can gain empathy by analyzing complex cultural texts such as Shakespeare in adaptation. Global perspectives can help us tackle the pervasive Whiteness of Shakespeare studies.

Research Assistant Duties: Assist in obtaining, electronically or in person, research materials from the library. Collate and summarize previous research on the topic. Assist in ensuring the manuscript's compliance with the MLA citation style. Receive substantive research related assignments. Collect and download the reviews. Prepare the index to the book. Training will be provided. Regular meeting with faculty over Zoom or in person

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Joubin ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Deborah Boucoyannis

Department: Political Science

Research Title: Comparison of Democracy Scores of Russia and Turkey in 1990s

Description: The task is quite simple but requires some familiarity with the major democracy scores, Polity, V-Dem, Boix and Rosato, and Svolik. You will simply record the main democracy score for Russia and Turkey between 1990 and 2000, as well as for 2010, 2015, and 2020.

Research Assistant Duties: You want to enter the democracy scores in an Excel Sheet.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 0 - No credit option

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Boucoyannis ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Cynthia McClintock

Department: Political Science

Research Title: The Impact of Electoral Rules on Political Inclusion Across the Globe

Description: This research is one component of a larger project on the impact of different majoritarian electoral rules--namely, ranked-choice voting, runoff, and plurality (first-past-the-post)--world-wide. GWU Ph.D. candidate Joseph Cerrone and I have been analyzing the impact of these different rules on voter satisfaction, political inclusion, and democracy in general. With respect to voter satisfaction, we are particularly interested in cases of repeal of a rule; we consider repeal to be an indication of dissatisfaction among both politicians and voters. With respect to political inclusion, we are particularly interested in the impact of the rules on women's share of the presidential vote and their victory. To date, we have built solid datasets for Latin America and Europe, but not for the Asia-Pacific or Africa.

Research Assistant Duties: The first responsibility is to secure precise information about the adoption and, when applicable, repeal of electoral rules in countries in the Asia-Pacific and Africa. Usually, this information is available online in reports about each country's election or its electoral code. There are slight variations in rules, and classification can be challenging. Upon the completion of this task, we expect to begin assessment of the political inclusion of women in countries in the Asia-Pacific and Africa, and would ask for research on the participation of women candidates, their vote shares, and their victories.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor McClintock ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Daisy Le

Department: School of Nursing: Policy, Populations and Systems

Research Title: Community Health Advocacy, Resolutions, and Messaging (I-CHARM)

Description: The Innovations in Community Health Advocacy, Resolutions, and Messaging (I-CHARM) research lab, under the leadership of Dr. Le, seeks to enhance community health awareness, outreach, and advocacy efforts by (1) identifying barriers to healthcare access and (2) developing effective, sustainable, and respectful strategies for intervention development,
implementation, and evaluation. Locally based in the DC area at George Washington University, the I-CHARM lab focuses on improving health behaviors and outcomes in underserved and vulnerable populations and has partnered with both government and community-based organizations to serve the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan (WBMA) community. Recent projects have focused on HPV self-sampling acceptability, vaping cessation strategies, HBV vaccination and testing, and the efficacy of digital/mobile technology in promoting healthy behaviors.

Research Assistant Duties: The Student Research Assistant will work with a small research team and gain valuable experience in conducting community-engaged health disparities research and intervention study development, implementation, and evaluation. Under the supervision/guidance of the lab manager and/or project coordinator, the identified individual will
assist with the day-to-day running of I-CHARM lab and perform research tasks such as:
—completing literature reviews and summary reports;
—leading participant recruitment and retention efforts;
—assisting with data collection, coding, entry, cleaning, and mixed-methods analyses;
—creating tables, graphs, and figures; and
—contributing to preliminary drafts for various sections of reports, presentations, and/or manuscripts.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Le ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: John Warren

Department: Publishing, College of Professional Studies

Research Title: Literary Journal Conference

Description: Literary Journal Conference: A large number of small literary journals have been formed in recent years, many of them run by or involving people of color and other diverse groups that have not been represented in traditional publishing. Two MPS in Publishing graduate students recently started an online literary journal, and we are considering the possibility of organizing an online conference, perhaps in Spring 2023, for individuals and organizations who are running online literary journals. A research assistant would work with me, and a pair of graduate students, to investigate the community of online literary journals, and help determine whether a conference would be appropriate, what topic(s) would be appropriate for the conference focus, who to invite to speak, and who to invite to attend.

Research Assistant Duties: Under supervision of Program Director and two
graduate students, the student will conduct a survey of online literary
journals, contacts, and potential topics of interest, creating a spreadsheet
of journals and contacts and a report of key issues and topics of interest.
(Should there be continued interest, the student could help to organize the
conference, potentially for Spring 2023.)

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Warren ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: John Warren

Department: Publishing, College of Professional Studies

Research Title: Publishing Journals / Publishing at GW

Description: Publishing Journals / Publishing at GW: We have been launching a new journal as part of our Publishing program, the GW Journal of Ethics in Publishing (https://gwpress.manifoldapp.org/projects/journal-of-ethics-in-publishing). I previously worked with an undergraduate student, pursuing a sustainability minor, to investigate and identify the need for publishing services at GW. We are looking for a research assistant examine this in more depth. Under the supervision of the Program Director, and a pair of MPS in Publishing graduate students, the student will research and document what departments, schools, and institutes at GW may be interested in having the GW Publishing program assist with publishing projects, such as journals, white papers, capstone projects, open educational resources (OERs) etc. We are using a publishing platform called Manifold (https://gwpress.manifoldapp.org/) that would allow us to help departments, schools, and institutes to publish these materials online. A research assistant could help by identifying needs, whether these services would or could be charged for, funding opportunities, and so forth.

Research Assistant Duties: Research and document potential departments, schools, and institutes at GW who may be interested publishing projects, such as journals, white papers, capstone projects, open educational resources (OERs) etc., collaborating with the GW MPS in Publishing program. Identify needs, investigate whether these services would or could be charged for, identify potential funding opportunities.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Warren ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Harris Mylonas

Department: Political Science

Research Title: Enemies Within

Description: I am currently completing the production of an edited volume entitled Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns (co-edited with Scott Radnitz). For more info:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/enemies-within-9780197627945?cc=us&lang=en&#
At this stage we need help with final proof-reading and indexing.

"The invocation of fifth columns in the political arena -- whether contrived or based on real fears -- has recurred periodically throughout history and is experiencing an upsurge in our era of democratic erosion and geopolitical uncertainty. Fifth columns accusations can have baleful effects on governance and trust, as they call into question the loyalty and belonging of the
targeted populations. They can cause human rights abuses, political repression, and even ethnic cleansing. Enemies Within is the first book to systematically investigate the roots and implications of the politics of fifth columns. In this volume, a multidisciplinary group of leading scholars address several related questions: When are actors likely to employ fifth-column claims and against whom? What accounts for changes in fifth-column framing over time? How do the claims and rhetoric of governments differ from those of societal groups? How do accusations against ethnically or ideologically defined groups differ? Finally, how do actors labeled as fifth columns respond? To answer these questions, the contributors apply a common theoretical framework and work within the tradition of qualitative social science to analyze cases from three continents, oftentimes challenging conventional wisdom. Enemies Within offers a unique perspective to better understand contemporary challenges including the rise of populism and authoritarianism, the return of chauvinistic nationalism, the weakening of democratic norms, and the persecution of ethnic or religious minorities and political dissidents."

Research Assistant Duties: Proof-reading chapters, looking into the references and solving queries, help with generating the index of the book.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 1-3 hours

Credit hour option*: 1 credit

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Mylonas ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Cynthia McClintock

Department: Political Science

Research Title: Voter Satisfaction under Plurality, Runoff, and Ranked-Choice Voting: The Impact of Come-from-Behind Victories

Description: This research is one component of a larger project on voter satisfaction under different majoritarian electoral rules—namely, ranked-choice voting, runoff, and plurality (first past-the-post) world-wide. In this study, a GWU Ph.D. candidate, Joseph Cerrone, and I measure voter satisfaction under the three rules in part by whether or not the rule is repealed. For nations, we were able to research easily whether or not a rule was repealed and why it was repealed; but, for cities in the U.S., information about repeals was often very limited. Although we determined that, of the 50 largest U.S. cities, only 8 retain plurality and 38 use runoff, information about the reasons for the repeal of plurality takes considerable time to find. Information on this issue would be very helpful for our project.

Research Assistant Duties: In general, the responsibility is to secure information about when and why electoral rules for the mayoralty in the largest U.S. cities have been repealed. The first task would be to identify expert consensus about which 50 U.S. cities are the largest. The second task would be to identify the electoral rule(s) used for mayoralty elections (both primary and general elections) in these cities and any changes in these rules since approximately 1950. The third task would be to explore the reasons for any changes. Most of the research would be done through a review of each city's newspapers.

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor McClintock ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Leah Brooks

Department: Trachtenberg School

Research Title: Democratic Governance and Citizen Participation: A Textual Analysis

Description: Since at least de Tocqueville, social thinkers have argued that citizen participation improves democratic governance. In our project, we ask whether, over the last century, the federal government has increased opportunity for public participation. We define participation to include pre-policy behavior such as voting, behavior near the policy decision such as lobbying, and ex-post behavior including litigation. We analyze the amount of participation using the text of all statutes passed in the United States since 1920. We use text analysis tools to measure the extent to which the government requires the executive branch to allow or encourage participation. We then evaluate whether this measure of participation correlates to indicia of realized participation including voting and litigation.

Research Assistant Duties:

Duties

Help us software to program the conversion of PDF files into a corpus of machine-readable text to be used for further analysis
Skills: experience with Python, careful reading and analytical skills
Preferred skills: history with natural language processing techniques, PDF parsing software

Skills you may gain

How to approach a research question
How to digitize large documents into an analyzable corpus
How to work in a high performance computing environment
Understand how federal statutes are constructed

Number of openings: 1

Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Brooks ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: W. Douglas Evans

Department: Public Health, Prevention and Community Health

Research Title: Digital Media for Cancer Control: Randomized Controlled Trial and Dose Response Effects

Description: There is little published data on exposure to and evaluations of large-scale, online tobacco control campaigns. The project addresses this gap. Under two specific aims, we will identify the independent effects of varying levels of digital message exposure to promote anti-tobacco attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors among youth and young adults, first through a randomized experiment online, and second through a field-based evaluation. These studies will advance the science of digital health and have wide application to future campaigns.

Research Assistant Duties: Research assistants will be expected to work with faculty and team members at GW, NYU, Truth Initiative*, and engage in the following research activities:
- Work on literature review
- Assist with survey development and data collection
- Attend meetings
- Possibly assist with data analysis and writing manuscripts for papers

* Truth Initiative is America’s largest nonprofit public health organization committed to making tobacco use and nicotine addiction a thing in the past.

This is a great opportunity for those who are interested in public health research and disease prevention through digital media that can expand your experience and career.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor Evans ([email protected])

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Michael Cornfield

Department: Political Management

Research Title: How Party Debates Frame National Issues

Description: The researcher would assist me as I write chapters of a book on the civic value of campaign speeches and debates. Specifically, the researcher would help provide context for transcripts of the 24 presidential debates held in 2015-2016 and the 14 in 2019-2020. My main hypothesis is that as candidates answer questions and engage each other in colloquies they
provide viewers with a sense of priorities and possibilities regarding national government action on the issues of the day. What is deemed realistic and what is not? That is what we can learn from debates.

The researcher will examine a variety of secondary sources on such issues as immigration, the economy, violence, climate change, and abortion to help me test hypotheses and uncover nuances. For example, I contend that on the economy Democrats are mainly Keynesian liberals and Republicans Keynesian conservatives: they want to stimulate the economy through deficit spending but on different government programs; Rand Paul's libertarianism and Bernie Sanders's democratic socialism were outlier positions.,

The work should be of interest to students of political communication. It will consist mostly of qualitative research and writing, with some compilation of spreadsheets eg on the debate time allotted to specific issues and candidates' usage of certain keywords.

Research Assistant Duties: Per the project description, weekly reports to me on assigned aspects of debate range articulation, issue by issue.

Number of openings: 1-3

Average weekly time commitment: 7-9 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: [email protected]

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Sarah Shomstein

Department: Psychological and Brain Sciences

Research Title: Attentional priorities in natural scenes

Description: The project explores neural and psychological mechanisms responsible for attentional selection (our brain's ability to figure out which information to process and which to ignore)

Research Assistant Duties:

assist with day-to-day running of the cognitive neuroscience lab
assist with data collection assist with data analysis

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 7-9 hours

Credit hour option*: 3 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: [email protected]

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Janet Steele

Department: SMPA

Research Title: Visual Misinformation in Global Perspective

Description: I am one of a team of researchers working on a project that utilizes survey experiments to test whether visual memes are more effective than text in leading users to recall factually inaccurate information, believe that information, and share it online. It also examines the role of different digital platforms (Facebook versus WhatsApp) in either helping or hindering the sharing of misinformation, as well as how particular institutional and social characteristics shape these phenomena. The project involves analysis of data from eight different countries on five continents, and I have agreed to do the analysis of Indonesia.

We have completed the initial phase, in which we identified specific memes involving misinformation that have spread on Facebook and WhatsApp, and developed survey questions and translated them into Indonesian. An international research company will conduct the survey experiment, and I will later be asked to analyze the results and write the narrative for the section on Indonesia.

Please note that applications for this position must be submitted by September 6.

Research Assistant Duties: Please note: knowledge of Indonesian is NOT required for this project.

I need someone who can help me find photos that illustrate our 8 different issues/topics. For each of the issues, four the images must be "high arousal," and four must be "low arousal," meaning that we will need a total of 64 images. Although this sounds simple, it is actually quite time-consuming, as there are a number of other requirements. For each of the 8 issues we identified the images need to be:

1. Either copyright-free or published by a reputable news organization that credits the copyright owners so we can credit them again.

2. The images do not have to come from Indonesia or from Indonesian news sources, as long as they are good illustrations of the misinformation we are showing participants.

Number of openings: 2

Average weekly time commitment: 4-6 hours

Credit hour option*: 2 credits

Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: [email protected]

*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.

Professor: Ellen Yeung

Department: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Title: Investigation of the Relationship between Substance Use and Pain

Description: Approximately 1 in 5 Americans, suffer from severe and/or persistent pain. Substance use/misuse and chronic pain frequently co-occur. Multiple studies have revealed an association between them showing the onset of substance use/misuse precedes people’s reports of chronic pain in some populations, and vice versa in other populations. You may wonder why this is the case. Do current substance users or people with a history of substance use/misuse show higher pain sensitivity? Do they report a heightened analgesic effect that in turn leads to greater likelihood of self-medication with alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, or opioids? Would chronic pain patients who rate higher on certain personality traits and/or loneliness be more at risk of substance use disorders? Do these devastating health conditions manifest similar physiological dysregulation that has been implicated in the brain reward and stress pathways? If you are interested in seeking answers to these questions, please consider joining my scientific effort to help people manage their substance use and chronic pain. I am recruiting conscientious and motivated undergraduate students to work as research assistants in my lab.

Duties: In this role, you will gain experience in recruiting and interviewing participants in the community, preparing and administering study materials, and managing electronic diary studies. Furthermore, during research assistant training, we will discuss theories of substance use disorders and chronic pain, as well as the research methodology and statistical techniques that allow us to address the research questions relevant to their co-occurrence. Together, we will review the literature, develop and organize a digital library, and code the research studies. In the future, when in person training is permitted, you will have the opportunity to get an insider's look at, and hands-on experience with, the process of assessing several physiological indices via state-of-the-art equipment and software. In short, you will gain important research skills highly valued in graduate and medical programs, while making a meaningful contribution to the accumulation of knowledge on substance use and chronic pain.

Time commitment: 6-8 hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 2

Number of openings: 3

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Alessandra Fenizia

Department: Economics

Title: Preventive Care in the Times of COVID

Description: The current pandemic has reshaped our lives in ways we did not anticipate and forced us to change our routines and plans. Most commentators have focused on the devastating effects of the virus and how to tackle the pandemic effectively. Less attention has been devoted how the epidemic has shifted attention and resources away from other realms of medicine. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many patients have skipped their routine checkups and avoided visiting the hospital or their primary physician unless it was truly necessary. What is the value of preventive care? What is the impact of skipping or postponing a routine checkup? How does this translate in short-term savings and long-term costs for the healthcare system?

Duties: review of the literature on preventive care, proof editing preliminary drafts, collecting qualitative and quantitative data

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 2

Number of openings: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Harris Mylonas

Department: Political Science

Title: Nationalism

Description: I’m writing a book on Nationalism for Cambridge University Press.

Duties: This project will involve reading articles and books and writing up
memos summarizing their main findings, focusing in particular on the impact
that nationalism has on other phenomena or processes. Also for each reading
we will be focusing how the authors conceptualize, define, and "measure"
nationalism. The RA will also be helping with references and citations.

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 2

Number of openings: 3

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Naomi Seiler

Department: Health Policy and Management

Title: Ongoing health policy research

Description: We have a great opportunity for a student to work with a team in
the Department of Health Policy and Management. Overall, we focus on legal
and policy aspects of health system changes, examining how they impact
various public health programs and issues. Currently, our portfolio of
funders includes federal and state agencies, health care foundations,
non-profit patient advocacy groups, and health care coalitions. We work on a
broad range of public health and prevention issues, including HIV, heart
disease and stroke, mental health and substance use disorder services,
prevention and public health funding, and community prevention of asthma. We
also do a significant amount of work on Medicaid, Medicare and marketplace
coverage, as well as new payment and service delivery models.

Duties: The research assistant would work with the two faculty members and
four senior researchers on a range of health policy research projects. They
would conduct qualitative and policy research related to the public health
issue areas listed above. We are all working remotely, with daily checkins.

Time commitment: 10 or more hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Jameta Barlow

Department: University Writing Program

Title: Womanist Characterization of African American Literature for Applied Impact

Description: In this political moment, where the pandemics of anti-Black
systems of oppression, science deniers and COVID-19, Womanism offers a lens
in which to address this culture in crisis. Defined as “a social change
perspective rooted in Black women’s and other women of color’s everyday
experiences and everyday methods of problem solving in everyday spaces,
extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people,
restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature and
reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension,” (Marparyan, 2012;
Phillips, 2006) Womanism is a transdisciplinary humanistic perspective,
epistemology and methodology that has been employed throughout the world to
address environmental issues, sexual violence and mental health, among other
social issues. This project will map seminal African American literature onto
the eight modalities characterizing Womanism, in an effort to explore the
utility of a humanistic intervention during this political moment.

There are eight modalities characterizing Womanism: self-care healing and
wellness practices, which are designed to rectify physical, emotional, mental
and spiritual practices; harmonizing and coordinating, or disposition and
activity to employ differential consciousness and move between divergent
logics and conceptual schemes; dialogue and the power of the word, to express
and establish connection and individuality as well as tension and connection;
arbitration and mediation, where conflict is transformed into peace; spiritual
activities, a socio-ecological transformational activity rooted in a
spiritual belief system including religious participation to transmutation
practices; hospitality, the transformative power of welcome that facilitates
powerful encounters; mutual aid and self-help, or everyday collective
grassroots methods garnered from life experience, wisdom, self-education and
democratic knowledge; and motherhood, a social change methodology and social
ecology that recognizes agency and interconnectivity with others.

Womanism is both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in its theoretical
framing, ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies. As a community
psychologist and public health scientist, I engage in Womanism modalities in
my work to disrupt cardiometabolic syndrome (e.g., diabetes, heart disease,
stroke, hypertension) among Black communities. Central to this work is my
curriculum of “writehealing” where I use writing to address self-care,
harmoninzing and coordinating and mutual aid and self-help. However, a major
gap in this work is a database of relevant African American literature that
can be utilized for intervention. This project offers a humanistic approach
for applied impact. A database that allows the user to discover African
American literature based on a Womanist modality, emotions and psychological
outcomes bridges multiple disciplinary gaps.

Duties: 1. Data mine, review, organize and characterize African American
literature according to the Womanist modality and health behavior(s)
2. Participate in weekly project meetings
3. Contribute to online database management and manuscript development

Time commitment: 7-9 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Sanjay Pandey

Department: Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration

Title: Advancing anti-racism and anti-sexism through scholarship

Description: There is a need for training the next generation of scholars on anti-racism
and anti-sexism. The purpose of this project is to help students develop social science
research skills and to apply these skills to anti-racist and/or anti-sexist inquiry. Ideal
candidates will be interested in developing a scholarly understanding, working
independently, and be motivated to meet milestones as part of a structured learning
experience. Like most RA listings, this is an unpaid assistantship.

Duties include:
1) Under instructor guidance come up with a work plan and revise it, as necessary
2) Implement the plan and communicate regularly (once a week or once every two
weeks) with the instructor and act on the feedback
3) Keep clear and extensive documentation of steps in the research process.

Time commitment: 8-10 hours per week (average) for a semester

**Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Maggie Chen

Department: Economics/ESIA

Title: Foreign Powers, Trademark Protection, and Firm Growth in Shanghai's Concession Era

Description: In this project, we seek to investigate whether and how compradors may have shaped the industrialization and economic transformation of China as both trade intermediaries and modern entrepreneurs. The historical context of the study covering the decades of China’s most drastic opening and industrial revolution offers us a unique setting for studying how intermediaries, a group that continues to exist and evolve with globalization today, may shape countries’ economic development and transformation. We will quantify the economic impact of compradors by exploring a rich array of historical micro datasets and tracking the compradors’ movements across positions and enterprises. We will perform a series of empirical analyses to examine how compradors affected the performance of their foreign employers and the establishment of new domestic entrepreneurship in industrial sectors.

Duties: data entry and construction, literature search, case study, and data analysis

Time commitment: 7-9 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to**: [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Harris Mylonas

Department: Political Science

Title: Greek and Cypriot Political Developments

Description: Conduct background research for the report on Greece that I contribute annually to the European Journal of Political Research.

Duties: Summarize events, find reliable sources to cite, edit text.

Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 1

Number of openings: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Jozef Przytycki

Department: Mathematics

Title: Knot Theory, assisting in editing, programming, and research

Description: Knot Theory is a discipline of modern mathematics, part of
topology (geometria situs). Student(s) will assist me with editing programing and
doing research in Knot Theory.

Duties: Students under my supervision will be involved in tasks as below:

1. Student would assist in preparing/editing research paper for arXiv
submission (and eventual publication). Student has to learn LaTeX and how to
draw figures in xfig or other similar
program.

2. Many invariants of graphs and knots require pattern testing which require
to wrote simple (or not that simple) programs. Also programs are needed to
analyze simple algebraic structures related to knots.

I assume student would assist me 4-6 hours a week (2 credit) but I am
flexible, so more, or less is possible.

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

Note: 2 openings!

**Credit hour option*: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Alex Pyron

Department: Biological Science

Title: Species Delimitation in Desmognathus Salamanders

Description:
The Dusky Salamanders, genus Desmognathus, are one of the most diverse and
abundant animals in the eastern forests of the United States. They are
classic study organisms for ecology and behavior. Despite their visibility
and imperilment, we know little about their genetic diversity and
evolutionary history. While there are only 21 currently named species, recent
work using DNA sequencing has revealed at least 45 potential species, which
would more than double the size of the group.

Duties: The research assistant will work with me to collect data and build a
computational model to distinguish between cryptic species of Desmognathus
salamander. Classes in ecology/evolution and experience with statistics are a
plus.

Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: David Mitchell

Department: English

Title: Disposable Humanity (feature-length documentary film)

Description: "Disposable Humanity" consists of three story strands that
create a braid across history and culture in relationship to disabled people
and their treatment in Nazi Germany during World War II and into the present.
The film will: 1) document the Nazi medical mass murder of 300,000+ “mental
patients” in psychiatric institutions (referred to as Aktion T4); 2)
examine the growing efforts in Germany and elsewhere (including the United
States, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Italy) to commemorate and
memorialize the victims; 3) explore the history of our personal family
journeys undertaken as disabled people to visit these memorial sites since
the late 1990s. Thus, the planned film will interweave history, culture, and
disability experience into its effort to make visible a forgotten and/or
erased aspect of Holocaust history.

Duties: Research assistants will assist with tracking down key historical
documents, photos, film clips, permissions related to the illustration of key
documentary film themes, topics, and interview b-roll materials. Each
assistant will be given a key theme to track down the best illustrative
documents -- for instance, one RA might watch all of the propaganda films
created around the sterilizations and, ultimately, murder of disabled people
institutionalization during World War II, select best clips to illustrate
ideas, and track down appropriate permissions related to the use of desired
materials in the final documentary film. Another student would transcribe
remaining interview transcripts and analyze the interview discussions with
respect to key themes covered (grass roots preservation of historical T4
locations, selection process, memorialization efforts, reparations advocacy
efforts, etc.). A third RA would research key documents such as photos of
Himmler visiting the first gassing facility at Poznan, Poland, Medical
meldobogen forms for gassing selections in Berlin, biographical victim data
available on websites (for example, gedenkort-T4.com; YadVashem.org),
physician and medical personnel trial transcripts and photos/film, etc. The
objective is to employ students in important archival work that goes into the
crafting of a feature-length film documentary

Number of Openings: 3

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Professor: Diego Abente Brun

Department: Elliott School of International Affairs

Title: The Foreign of Brazil: From the Discourse to the Facts

Description: This project consists of following up the foreign policy
decisions and positions of the Bolsanaro government and explore the
congruence/incongruence between words and deeds. Especial emphasis will be
paid to relations with Argentina. It implies also to compare and contrast his
government's foreign policy with that of previous governments and includes
the analysis of the role of key institutions, chiefly Itamaraty, but also
private actors such as business associations, the Congress, civil society
organizations and the media.

Duties: 1. To identify key issue-areas.( In close consultation with the
Instructor)
2. To collect data and review the literature. (Portuguese and Spanish
reading language proficiency required)
3. To trace and underline the difference and similarities with previous
official positions.
4. To explore the likely course of events in the future.
5. To conclude with a summary of the key findings, the risks and
opportunities they offer, and policy recommendations for other foreign actors
such as the United States, Europe, and regional actores.
6. The project will be discussed with the instructor and may be adjusted
based on the student's interests.

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

**Credit hour option*: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:** [email protected]

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.

Research Opportunities for Honors Students

Option to Receive Academic Credit

Open Positions

American Studies

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English

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Publishing, College of Professional Studies

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Tratchenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration

University Writing Program