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.
*NEW* LISTINGS FOR FALL 2026:
Digital Humanities Institute
- Professor Alexa Alice Joubin - Open-Access AI and Web Development
ESIA, Institute for International Science and Technology Policy (IISTP)
- Professor Susan Aaronson - Meta study Trust and AI
History
- Professor Erin Chapman - American Radical: Lorraine Hansberry and the Struggle to Save the United States
- Professor Arie Dubnov - The Modern Reception and Revival of the Maccabean Story (1750–Present)
- Professor Arie Dubnov - VIP Intellectuals visiting Israel during the 1960s-70s
- Professor Quito Swan - Bogle's Reminder: A Global History of Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion
Interior Architecture
- Professor Erin Speck - Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanitorium, WELL and LEED Strategies
International Business
- Professor Rodimiro Rodrigo Flores - Reskilling to succeed: How workers transition to AI work
Law
- Professor Sara Bronin - National Zoning Atlas
- Professor Jonathan Cedarbaum - The Legal Bases of Executive Orders: An Initial Empirical Study
- Professor Heidi Liu - Responding to Everyday Legal Situations
- Professor Kris Svendsen - EVs and national security
Mathematics
- Professor Max Alekseyev - Smallest tuples of consecutive Harshad numbers
- Professor Jozef Przytycki - Knot Theory; Assisting with editing, programming, and research
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Professor Peng Wei - AI in Aviation Systems
Political Science
- Professor Eric Grynaviski - Conquest and Military Diffusion
- Professor Cynthia McClintock - The Challenges to the Building of Political Parties: Peru in Comparative Perspective
- Professor Cynthia McClintock - Why Do Women Win the Presidency in Latin America? The Preferences of Popular Male Incumbents
- Professor Sharon Wolchik - Women Under Communism
Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Professor Sarah Shomstein - Mechanisms (neural and behavioral) of Attentional Selection
- Professor Ellen Yeung - Social-Cognitive Flexibility and Chronic Pain
Publishing - College of Professional Studies
- Professor John Warren - Student Journals: Research and Symposium
Romance, German, and Slavic Studies (Spanish)
- Professor Christopher Britt - Imperial Citizenship
School of Media and Public Affairs
- Professor Steven Livingston - Religious Media Content and the Ritual View of Communication
Sociology
- Professor Michelle Kelso - Changing Girls’ Lives in Rural Africa: Impact of Empowerment Programming on Extreme Poverty, Gender-Based Violence and Climate Change Resiliency
Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
- Professor Cynthia Core - Bilingual Language Development
Tratchenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
- Professor Leah Brooks - State of the Capital Region 2027
LISTINGS FOR FALL 2025:
History
- Professor Katrin Schultheiss - Women Rescuers during the Nazi Period
International Affairs
- Professor Shirley Graham - Assessment of Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans
International Education-Educational Leadership/International Affairs
- Professor Laura Engel - Enhancing System Support for Teacher Well-Being and Retention in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards a Place-Based, Collaborative Research Agenda
Strategic Management & Public Policy
- Professor John Forrer - Biodiversity Credits
- Professor John Forrer - Circular Economy and Circular Business Models
Listings pre-Fall 2025:
Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
- Professor Andrew Smith - Building a Reference Collection for the Development of Machine-learning Tools to Study Archaeological Sites in Jordan and Aid in the Cultural Resource Management of the World Heritage Site of Petra
RA Position Descriptions
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 programming 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.
Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)
Number of openings: 2
Credit hour option*: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: przytyck
gwu [dot] edu (przytyck[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.
Professor: Cynthia McClintock
Department: Political Science
Research Title: The Challenges to the Building of Political Parties: Peru in Comparative Perspective
Description: In some Latin American countries, political parties have rarely achieved institutionalization, and this has been particularly the case in Peru. This project explores explanations for party-building failure, considering in particular the implications of political culture (namely, a history of failures to build parties) and the implications of political economy (namely, shifts in a country's exports and economic production patterns).
Knowledge of Spanish and/or knowledge of statistics would be valuable. It would also be helpful if the research assistant is open to work that could arise for previous scholarly projects by the professor.
Research Assistant Duties: The construction of datasets, largely through online research, and also bibliographic reviews.
Number of openings: 1
Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours
Credit hour option*: 3 credits
Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor McClintock (mcclingwu [dot] edu (mcclin[at]gwu[dot]edu))
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.
Professor: Cynthia McClintock
Department: Political Science
Research Title: Why Do Women Win the Presidency in Latin America? The Preferences of Popular Male Incumbents
Description: It is surprising that, in Latin America—a region widely deemed machista—many women have been elected to the presidency. This research begins with the observation that, most saliently, in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico, popular male incumbents identified female politicians as their preferred successors.
The first research task is to identify the full set of male incumbents who preferred a female successor (and possible qualifying conditions, such as the possibilities for the men's return to the presidential office). The second is to explore, through newspaper articles in Spanish from the Latin American countries, the explanations for the men's preference for a woman successor. This research requires a willingness to read large sets of newspaper archives in depth in Spanish.
Number of openings: 1
Average weekly time commitment: 5-7 hours
Credit hour option*: 3 credits
Submit Resume/Cover Letter to: Professor McClintock (mcclingwu [dot] edu (mcclin[at]gwu[dot]edu))
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract.
Department: Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Title: Building a Reference Collection for the Development of Machine-learning Tools to Study Archaeological Sites in Jordan and Aid in the Cultural Resource Management of the World Heritage Site of Petra
Description:
We are developing a reference collection based on archived archaeological image and text data from southern Jordan. We seek to build a reference collection that will serve as a platform for the development of two Machine-learning (ML) models of use to academics, educators, and conservators, in the preservation and management of archaeological sites associated with the World Heritage site of Petra, now a World Wonder, and other sites in southern Jordan associated with the ancient Incense Route. This reference collection and the ML models derived from it will facilitate the identification and dating of archaeological sites in southern Jordan and promote best practices in cultural heritage management. This reference collection’s data infrastructure and the ML models will also be transferable, allowing scholars in other regions to apply these tools to their datasets. These ML models will eventually form the underpinnings for an applied AI model. This is now a cornerstone project for the Center for Ancient Arabian Studies at GW.
Duties include:
At this stage, the student will be engaged in mostly archival work. The student will mine journals and monographs for illustrations of archaeological ceramic material, scan them, and enter appropriate metadata.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 1-2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: amsiigwu [dot] edu (amsii[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Sociology
Title: Changing Girls’ Lives in Rural Africa: Impact of Empowerment Programming on Extreme Poverty, Gender-Based Violence and Climate Change Resiliency
Description:
While research has focused extensively on programming, little scholarship focuses on the impact holistic empowerment programs have had on economic and social sustainability, GBV prevention, and climate resiliency for adolescent girls and youth in rural areas. My project will complement existing work on gender and development (writ empowerment) while also expanding theory and praxis. In practice, development programs often offer gender-based violence as separate from other initiatives. I believe my research will reveal that a holistic empowerment model can greatly impact the lives of teenage girls living in extreme poverty in rural areas by increasing their economic and social stability, thus reducing GBV, even if it is not the primary intervention area. Empowerment can do so through confidence building, the creation of strong social ties and networks in communities, and microfinance grants and coaching for small business development. Thus my work will both complement and challenge existing paradigms, especially of GBV prevention models that use stand alone and targeted programming to decrease its prevalence
Methods: Survey research, focus groups and interviews.(Already completed)
Key Responsibilities:
Position 1: Quantitative data analysis assistant. I would love someone who can help us work with our data who is familiar with R and/or Stata. Experience required. Hours - 1-3 per week.. Credit hour option is possible.
Position 2: General research assistant. Duties include assisting with lit reviews, working with qualitative data and presentations. Willingness to learn NVIVO. Credit hour option is possible.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1-2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: mkelsogwu [dot] edu (mkelso[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: SMPA; ESIA
Title: Religious Media Content and the Ritual View of Communication
Description:
This project explores the role of political party allied organizations, what Harvard political scientist has called surrogate organizations, in promoting democratic stability and decay. While some allies help a struggling party mobilize supporters and win elections, other kinds of surrogate organizations are radicalizing and destabilizing. Joining a graduate research assistant and MA student, this project would ask that you work with me and the GTA in the analysis of a network of surrogate organizations aligned with the US Republican Party. Here is a recent articles that provide a more complete theoretical explanation:
https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/P6FHAMQTQZZKBKPFGIEW/full
Key Responsibilities:
Working with Steven Livingston and SMPA MA graduate research assistant Julia Baker, the honors research assistant will help design a data collection strategy and investigate on and offline relationships among a variety of key organizations and individuals that Livingston hypothesizes constitutes an important GOP surrogate organization. The main benefit for the student involves research design, data collection and analysis, and learning to work with a research team.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: slivgwu [dot] edu (sliv[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: IISTP, ESIA
Title: Meta study Trust and AI
Description:
We need an RA to develop a listing and summarize (can use notebook LLM) the scholarly literature on trust in AI (how to develop it; sustain it, what it means etc.) from different disciplines. We hope to then do a meta study. We will then do trustworthy AI.
Key Responsibilities:
- Students must have some understanding of AI and trust.
- Do a library search of the literature.
- Obtain the literature and summarize.
- Work with us on drafting the metastudy.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 4
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: saaronsogwu [dot] edu (saaronso[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: History
Title: Women Rescuers during the Nazi Period
Description:
I am seeking a student research assistant for a new project that will document the largely unrecognized work of women who organized the rescue of Jews and other victims of the Holocaust in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. While a significant amount of research has been conducted on the efforts of a handful of prominent rescuers (for example, Varian Fry, Nicholas Winton), there is relatively little work on the hundreds of ordinary people who risked their lives to try to rescue Jews and other persecuted peoples from Nazi Germany and German-occupied countries. Especially noticeable is the absence of published work on women who used their professional and social connections to create pathways of escape for persecuted individuals and families. This project seeks to recover the history of these women in an effort not only to restore them to the historical record where they have been largely ignored, but also to reveal the many ingenuous strategies that women adopted to conduct their courageous and lifesaving work.
Key Responsibilities:
I am just beginning this project so the research assistant would have the opportunity to help shape its parameters and contribute meaningfully to its substance. Initial work would involve scouring the numerous on-line research databases and archival collections to develop a preliminary index of women who will be included in the project. That index will form the foundation on which further research will be built. I am looking for a highly organized, responsible, motivated research assistant with an interest in the history of the Holocaust and women’s history.
Required skills: Familiarity with using online archival sites; ability to accurately record and organize identified relevant material (attention to accuracy and detail is essential!); Reading knowledge of at least one relevant European language, e.g. German, Dutch, French, Polish.. (RA does not have to be fluent but they must be able to navigate a foreign-language-based website and understand the gist of the material on it.); ability to work independently and to take initiative.
Desirable background: Familiarity with the history of the Holocaust, Europe in the 1930s, women’s history; Experience with database creation and management.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: kschulthgwu [dot] edu
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Mathematics
Title: Smallest Tuples of Consecutive Harshad Numbers
Description:
A Harshad number is a positive integer that is divided by the sum of its digits. Cooper and Kennedy (Fibonacci Quart. 21, 1993) proved that at most 20 consecutive integers can all be Harshad numbers. The smallest n-tuples of consecutive Harshad numbers are known for n up to 14 as well as for n = 16 and n = 17 (see https://oeis.org/A060159). This project is aimed at closing the gap by finding the smallest n-tuples of consecutive Harshad numbers for the remaining values n = 15, 18, 19, and 20.
Key Responsibilities:
Read the suggested mathematical literature, design an algorithmic approach, carry out numerical experiments (possibly using HPC), prepare a final report and/or research paper with description of the algorithm and computational results. Project requires familiarity with elementary number theory and scientific programming.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 1
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: maxalgwu [dot] edu (maxal[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Interior Architecture
Title: Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanitorium , WELL and LEED Strategies
Description:
The project is an analysis of Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanitorium for compliance with current WELL (International WELL Building Institute) and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Standards.
Using the current LEED and WELL Standards along with floor plans, elevations and other written information about Paimio Sanitorium determine which, if any, strategies are evidenced.
To understand the foundation of sustainability and human wellness in a healthcare environment.
Key Responsibilities:
- Find information about the sanitorium including floor plans, elevations, and other orthographic and 3D drawings of the sanitorium.
- Find articles and other information about the sanitorium.
- Access the current LEED and WELL Standards.
- Compare the information about the sanitorium with the Standards and note any evidence of the Standards being incorporated. Note where unusual features that were believed to be healthy were incorporated.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: jespeckgwu [dot] edu (jespeck[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Strategic Management & Public Policy
Title: Biodiversity Credits
Description:
Sustainable biodiversity of the global environment is under threat due to expanded deforestation, corporate farming and urbanization. Carbon credits and carbon market exchanges have been established as an approach to reduce carbon emissions. Conservation groups have become interested in the idea of establishing 'biodiversity credits' as an approach to advancing biodiversity, but the idea is new and there are many practical questions on how such an approach would work and how success world be measured.
The research project involves writing a report on the opportunities and challenges of establishing a global biodiversity credit trading regime, drawing on the literature and the experiences of global carbon credit exchanges. Based on the report ICR will convene a meeting of conservation org and other interested parties to discuss the findings of the report and develop a Work Plan for a collaboration to develop pilot programs that advance biodiversity using biodiversity credits.
Key Responsibilities:
The RAs will conduct a literature review and write up an annotated bibliography of current research in the field, help write the ICR report, and assist in organizing the seminar
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: jforrergwu [dot] edu (jforrer[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Strategic Management & Public Policy
Title: Circular Economy and Circular Business Models
Description:
Circular Economy has become a popular topic among governments, advocates and businesses. The focus of the topic has been the reduction of waste. But efforts to develop b business models that utilize the waste for commercial purposes and embrace sustainability face many challenges. In response, ICR is developing a different approach -- circular business models.
Circular business models consider the concern about waste as a matter to be addressed by considering sourcing security issues. For any company, the reliability and sustainability of their supply chain is a constant risk. Firms face three options when addressing the risks around their supply chains:
- Take actions that mitigate the risks of the existing supply chain.
- Selective different sources and supply chain partners to produce required materials and services.
- Harvest needed materials from its own or other's waste streams.
Our research is developing a framework and an analytic tool to help firms make the determination of which the options offer the best way to reduce sourcing risks.
One, we will focus on U.S state laws regarding circularity regulations and requirements. Two, we will develop a CBM Mapping tool that examines the full supply chain of a company and identifies what options the firm has to alter its practices (and its business model) to increase supply chain security -- including waste utilization
Key Responsibilities:
RAs will search state government policies regarding circularity and document what requirements exist. A report will be written based on the data collected and analyzed.
RAs will help develop an analytic tool and search capability -- using AI -to create a CBM map for a specific firm
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: jforrergwu [dot] edu (jforrer[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: International Education-Educational Leadership/International Affairs
Title: Enhancing System Support for Teacher Well-Being and Retention in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards a Place-Based, Collaborative Research Agenda
Description:
This Spencer Foundation funded Vision Grant, Enhancing System Support for Teacher Well-Being and Retention in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards a Place-Based, Collaborative Research Agenda, supports a scope of work toward the planning of a large transformative grant. The cross-national project will be carried out from 12/2025-11/2026 as a collaboration between GW (PI Engel), a team from University of Nottingham, UK, and partners in three African contexts.
Key Responsibilities:
The project requires support with the following tasks in spring:
- Literature review
- Organization and retrieval of policy documents to enable a comparison of 3 countries
- Planning of a symposium in Feb. 2026
- Preparation for data collection in summer
- Synthesis and write up of results
- Assist with preparation of visuals.
The RA will help a team of 2 faculty and a MA and PhD student.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1-2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: Lcegwu [dot] edu (Lce[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: History
Title: The Modern Reception and Revival of the Maccabean Story (1750–Present)
Description:
The PI is a cultural historian. The aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to examine the history of ideas surrounding the Maccabean revolt and the Hasmonean state, focusing not on the ancient events themselves, but on their cultural, political, and historical reception in the modern era (circa 1750 to 1950). The project analyzes how this ancient Jewish story was strategically revived, repurposed, and deployed as a potent allegory for modern nationalist movements—both Jewish and non-Jewish—and transformed into a foundational symbol.
This study charts the competing allegories embedded in the story’s modern life, investigating figures and works across four key disciplinary clusters:
- Musical Appropriation: Tracing the use of the Maccabean story as a universal allegory for liberty and national resistance in European high culture, exemplified by G. F. Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus (1746) and references in composers such as Beethoven and others
- Literary Adaptation: Identifying and examining how 20th-century historical novels that retold the ancient story, ranging from the German-Jewish émigré Leon Feuchtwanger to the Israeli Moshe Shamir, who utilized the narrative as a framework for exploring modern issues of Jewish identity and sovereignty.
- Historiographical Discourse: Analyzing how key historians—such as Heinrich Graetz, Simon Dubnow, Elias J. Bickerman, Victor Tcherikover, and more —interpreted the Hasmonean revolt.
- Cultural and Political Iconography: Documenting the translation of the story into modern art and political ideology, specifically within the Zionist movement, most notably in Max Nordau’s political tracts and the subsequent founding of the Maccabiah Games, and the related elevation of Hanukkah from a minor religious festival to a major holiday, often positioned in competition with Christmas.
The RAship fits students passionate about the history of ideas, cultural studies, and intellectual history, who are prepared to conduct high-level research across multiple academic fields using specialized library resources and databases.
Key Responsibilities:
The Research Assistant’s (RA) main tasks will include targeted collection, organization, and annotation of primary and secondary sources:
- Conducting targeted bibliographical searches to locate scholarly reviews, critiques, and analyses of the core historical texts by Bickerman, Tcherikover, Dubnow and others.
- Systematically searching specialized databases and institutional catalogs (Gelman, Library of Congress) for primary source materials, including original musical scores and libretti, rare literary editions, and foundational political tracts.
- Locating and reading digitized historical newspapers and periodicals (Israeli, Jewish American, and European) to find reports on the early Maccabiah Games and cultural promotion efforts related to the modern elevation of Hanukkah.
- Organizing and annotating collected materials, including citations and brief content summaries, using shared collaborative platforms.
Required Skills:
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Ability to conduct advanced research using online academic databases, such as JSTOR and ProQuest.
- Proven familiarity with research library catalogs and ability to navigate research resources at the Library of Congress and GWU’s Gelman Library/
- Familiarity with Google Docs/ Google Drive or other collaborative sharing platforms.
- A strong affinity for humanities research, intellectual history, and cultural analysis.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Holding a Library of Congress reader’s card, or a demonstrated willingness to obtain one immediately upon appointment
- Demonstrated interest in the intersection of history, literature, and political thought.
- Reading knowledge in other languages besides English (e.g., German or Hebrew) is advantageous but not strictly required.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1-2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dubnovgwu [dot] edu
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: History
Title: VIP Intellectuals visiting Israel during the 1960s-70s
Description:
The aim of my research project is to offer a historical portrait of Israeli culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It examines a young generation of Israeli authors, poets, visual artists, musicians, dramaturges, intellectuals, and more, and while it offers a snapshot at Israeli history during a short but dramatic period (especially between the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War) it also provides a generational portrait on the Israel’s Jewish “baby boomers” (i.e., artists and creative minds born during the post-World War II baby boom). More specifically, it shows how the local Israeli bohemia attempted to forge its own identity vis-à-vis youth elsewhere, and in particular in relation to the anti-war and counterculture movements and the student revolts of 1968. In that respect, the research uses a “glocal” perspective and framing, that is one that combines the local and the global dimensions of these cultural encounters.
As part of that project, I would like to look closely at several significant intellectual encounters between notable non-Israeli intellectuals and artists who came to visit Israel and the local Israeli intelligentsia. Among those “VIP visits” are included a well-documented visit of the legendary French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the influential “Beat” poet and writer Allen Ginsberg, the German-born critical theorist Herbert Marcuse and the political theorist Hannah Arendt, the American filmmaker, essayist, and political activist Susan Sontag and more.
The Research Assistant (RA) would assist me in finding additional traces and records of these and other visits through sifting through historical newspapers, published biographies, memoirs, and unpublished private papers and archives in the US and Europe. Ideally, the RAship fits students passionate about literature, culture (including pop culture and youth culture), and intellectual history, who feel comfortable conducting empirical research using offline library resources alongside online databases, digitized newspapers, and archives.
Key Responsibilities:
The Research Assistant’s (RA) main tasks will include:
- Finding and reading historical newspapers that report on these visits.
- Finding and reading books (biographies, autobiographies, memoirs) that shed additional light on these visits.
- Communicate with archives and cultural institutions (in the US, Europe, and Israel) and order scans of documents related to the research.
- Research, find and reproduce rare materials from the Library of Congress and/or GWU’s Gelman Library.
Required Skills:
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Ability to conduct advanced research using online academic databases (JSTOR, historical newspapers and more).
- Familiarity with Dropbox and Google Drive
- Holding a Library of Congress reader’s card.
Knowledge of Hebrew and/or Israeli culture is preferable but not required. Passion about the subject is far more important. Particular preference would be given to students interested in working on the intersection of history and literature.
I am open to the possibility of an independent study as well, which will allow the student to gain extra credit after writing his/her own research essay on the subject.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dubnovgwu [dot] edu (dubnov[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Elliott School of International Affairs
Title: Assessment of Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans
Description:
Gathering 115 National Action Plans by UN member states and assessing their inclusion of men and masculinities in policy goals, indicators, and implementation plans. Conducting content analysis of words/terms, coding them, and extrapolating them into a final report mapping the frequency of use/dates/contexts in which men and masculinities are discussed.
Key Responsibilities:
The research assistant will carry out the work described above by using Nvivo or MAXQDA or another qualitative or quantitative research tool. They will code, gather data, analyze and submit their findings in a report.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1-2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: shirleygrahamgwu [dot] edu (shirleygraham[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Digital Humanities Institute
Title: Open-Access AI and Web Development
Description:
TeachAnything.ai is an open-source and open-access AI platform for higher education. The infrastructure allows for creation of numerous high-functioning, domain-specific chatbots using open-source LLMs. We are building open-access infrastructure, not just one AI. The Honors Research Assistant will be a core team member. The assistant will also engage in web development tasks in addition to the AI project.
The Honors research assistant will also engage in web development tasks in addition to the AI project.
Key Responsibilities:
Proficient in:
- Solid foundation in JavaScript, js, Express, MongoDB
- Experience with React as a transferrable skill
- Next.js – React-based framework for building full-stack web apps, with routing and API support
- TypeScript – A typed superset of JavaScript for safer and more scalable code
- Tailwind CSS – Utility-first CSS framework for fast and responsive UI design
- Supabase – Open-source Firebase alternative for database, auth, and storage
- Vercel – Hosting platform optimized for frontend frameworks like Next.js
- NextAuth.js – Authentication library built for Next.js
- Resend – Email service for sending transactional and marketing emails
- Full-stack web development, debugging, responsive design
- Back-end web maintenance: PHP
- Curation and formatting of proprietary dataset to train the AI
- Installation of AI chatbots on websites via API integration
- Beta-testing AI chatbots and flagging errors
- Coding pages to load quickly
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ajoubingwu [dot] edu (ajoubin[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Title: Bilingual Language Development
Description:
The Bilingual Language Development Lab studies acquisition of early speech and language skills in young children. Recently work has expanded to include questions related to clinical application of primary research on dual language development, and the factors related to home language maintenance. The lab also studies caregiver perspectives on dual language learning and clinical speech-language service provision for children learning two languages.
Key Responsibilities:
Students in this lab help with one of several projects on speech and language development in young bilingual children. Students with training in phonetics may do phonetic transcription. Students may analyze language samples to understand development of vocabulary and grammar skills. There are also other research activities, such as compiling data for analysis, analyzing data using statistics software, and compiling and analyzing relevant literature. Students may work on a team to support manuscript preparation. Students may help recruit participants for ongoing projects. Students with a high level of Spanish proficiency are especially welcome and will have an opportunity to use their language skills in this project.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1-3
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: coregwu [dot] edu (core[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Romance, German, and Slavic Studies (Spanish)
Title: Imperial Citizenship
Description:
Imperial Citizenship examines how U.S. overseas expansion at the turn of the twentieth century—specifically the conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898—produced a transformed and diminished conception of democratic citizenship. Rather than extending a robust, participatory republican citizenship to colonized populations, U.S. imperial rule institutionalized a depoliticized and privatized form of citizenship. This new model emphasized economic opportunity, private rights, and security while discouraging collective political participation, weakening commitments to the common good, and eroding republican civic virtues. The project studies how imperial governance normalized the acceptance of tutelage and even tyranny in exchange for prosperity and protection, thereby reshaping democracy itself at the metropolitan center as well as in the colonies.
The project employs an interdisciplinary methodology combining historical, textual, and theoretical analysis:
Archival and Historical Research:
- Examination of legal texts (e.g., the Insular Cases, colonial statutes), administrative reports, congressional debates, and colonial policy documents to trace how citizenship was legally and institutionally redefined.
Textual and Discourse Analysis:
- Close readings of political speeches, newspaper editorials, and intellectual debates in both the metropole and the colonies to analyze how imperial citizenship was articulated, justified, and contested.
Comparative Colonial Analysis:
- A comparative study of Puerto Rico and the Philippines to highlight shared imperial logics as well as divergent outcomes shaped by race, economy, and geopolitical strategy.
Political Theory Framework:
- Engagement with republican traditions of citizenship (from classical to modern) alongside critical theories of empire, capitalism, and democratic politics to situate imperial citizenship within broader debates about democracy and power.
Key Responsibilities:
The ideal research assistant will be fully bi-lingual in Spanish and English. Responsibilities include: Conducting research in the archives of the Library of Congress (especially of governmental documents and mass-media portrayals of U.S. education policy in PR and the Philippines); drafting detailed summaries of archival findings; and consulting multi-media archives (turn-of-the-century film and photography, mostly). Meet regularly to discuss progress and strategies.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: cbrittgwu [dot] edu
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Law
Title: National Zoning Atlas
Description:
The National Zoning Atlas (NZA), online at www.zoningatlas.org and run by Professor Sara Bronin, is digitizing information about the country’s zoning codes. Student researchers will help collect zoning texts and zoning maps in hundreds of jurisdictions across the country to facilitate analysis by the NZA’s full-time staff. Students will gain insights into land use regulations, housing policies, and local government capabilities and practices.
Methods
Student researchers will receive detailed instructions, but in general, they will be reviewing jurisdictions’ websites and ordinances, contacting jurisdictions when needed (including submitting public information/FOI requests), identifying the existence of zoning codes, and extracting zoning codes in a standard format. Researchers will be inputting information about zoning codes and notes about their points of contact in a Google Sheet; for jurisdictions that have zoning, project participants will also collect and deposit zoning code texts and maps that they find online into a shared dropbox. For jurisdictions without zoning, results will be immediately visible on the public NZA map. They will be guided by Professor Bronin and a senior member of the NZA team. Additional research tasks may be added as mutually agreeable.
Goals
By joining this research project, student researchers will contribute to the country’s largest repository of zoning information ever created. (Over 500 people have contributed to the NZA so far!) Ultimately, we hope project participants gain an understanding of local zoning codes, municipal law records maintenance, and the availability of and access to the law itself, and develop a sense of pride in contributing to this nationwide legal research project.
Key Responsibilities:
The research assistant will be required to undergo a training, onboard to the NZA Slack channel, check in on a weekly basis with Professor Bronin and/or a senior member of the NZA team, upload jurisdictions’ zoning codes to a common portal, and deliver reports and questions on a regular basis.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 1-5
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: sara [dot] broningwu [dot] edu (sara[dot]bronin[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Law
Title: The Legal Bases of Executive Orders: An Initial Empirical Study
Description:
The goal of this project is to produce a publishable article examining the patterns in the legal authorities Presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Donald Trump have identified when issuing executive orders. With the help of three research assistants I have compiled a database of information about nearly 4,000 executive orders issued, from FDR to Trump. I now need help analyzing the results.
Key Responsibilities:
Tabulating the results for several variables in the database/spreadsheet and compiling the results into a series of tables along several comparative dimensions. Experience with this sort of work and knowledge of R would be pluses.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: jonathan [dot] cedarbaumlaw [dot] gwu [dot] edu (jonathan[dot]cedarbaum[at]law[dot]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Publishing - College of Professional Studies
Title: Student Journals: Research and Symposium
Description:
Seeking one or two talented undergraduate students to collaborate in researching the landscape of student-led journals and to co-organize a conference, in Spring 2027, that brings student journals together in dialogue. You will help research potential journals, determine topics for the conference, create a call for presentations, invite students and faculty to present, decide on what presentations and panelists to accept, and organizing the conference logistics.
The Student Journal Symposium for Literary and Research Publications (https://gwpress.manifoldapp.org/projects/project-collection/student-journal-symposium) seeks to foster dialogue and collaboration among undergraduate and graduate student-led journals. Our first three Student Journal Symposiums were co-organized by GW undergraduate honors students in collaboration with GW Publishing graduate students and the Publishing program director. At our 3rd Student Journal Symposium in April 2026, we heard from 35 student journals and presses from 30 universities, including 73 undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, librarians, administrators, and others involved in publishing literary, research, and specialized journals and presses.
Student-led literary and research journals have been formed in many universities, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, many of them run by or involving people of color and other diverse groups that have not been represented in traditional publishing. The Student Journal Symposium brings undergraduate and graduate students involved in these journals, as well as faculty and administrators who support these journals, in constructive dialogue around best practices, sustainability, marketing, and community building.
Key Responsibilities:
Under supervision of the Publishing Program Director and one or two graduate students, the student(s) will:
- Conduct research on student journals and contacts at these journals;
- Update a spreadsheet of journals and contacts;
- Consider key issues and topics of interest for the conference;
- Help organize the conference in Spring 2027.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 1
Number of openings: 1-2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: jwwgwu [dot] edu (jww[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Law
Title: Responding to Everyday Legal Situations
Description:
This project studies how people respond to potential legal situations before they escalate to formal litigation. Study participants have written short responses to a scenario, and research assistants will read these messages and classify their content according to a codebook.
Research assistants would apply the codebook consistently and achieve high interrater agreement with other research assistants. This project is a particularly good fit for someone who has previous social science research experience, or who is interested in the law.
Key Responsibilities:
- Completing CITI ethics training (if not already completed)
- Applying the codebook to practice codes and stress testing the codebook with unusual cases
- Once ethics and coding training are completed, apply the codebook to participant responses and code them for content by a set deadline each week.
- Meet regularly to reconcile coding and check inter-rater reliability with other RAs.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 2-3
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: heidiliulaw [dot] gwu [dot] edu (heidiliu[at]law[dot]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Professor: Rodimiro Rodrigo Flores
Department: International Business
Title: Reskilling to succeed: How workers transition to AI work
Description:
In this project we will analyze more than 10k workers over 15 years to learn how online workers transform their skills in a world with AI.
Key Responsibilities:
Good knowledge of Stata and data analysis is required. We will scrape data, describe it, analyze it and report results that will be part of an academic paper. Coding with AI assistance is allowed and encouraged, but a full understanding and validation of the codes and results is requested.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: rodimiro [dot] rodrigogwu [dot] edu (rodimiro[dot]rodrigo[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Psychological and Brain Sciences
Title: Mechanisms (neural and behavioral) of Attentional Selection
Description:
One of the fundamental properties of our environment is that it is comprised of a multitude of sensory information. Given such richness of input, humans are faced with the problem of having limited capacity for processing information, on the one hand, and the need to process as much of the sensory input as possible, on the other.
Here at the Attention and Cognition Laboratory our research is concerned with understanding the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying attentional selection, and focuses on two general questions. The first question concerns the representations, or units, from which selection occurs and this line of research focuses primarily on the behavioral and neural correlates of spatial, object-based and selection as human observers analyze incoming information. The second question concerns the computations involved in the selection per se and this research investigates the neural source of the attentional signal and the impact this signal exerts on the neural trace of the sensory stimulus before and after it has been attentionally selected.
Key Responsibilities:
Help with day to day running of the lab. Learn how to use eye-tracker, and help collect data. Attend weekly lab meeting.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 4
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: shomgwu [dot] edu (shom[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: AI in Aviation Systems
Description:
We are looking for two undergrad RAs for the following two topics related to AI in Aviation Systems:
Project 1: Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for Drone Delivery
- In this project, the RA will work with Prof. Wei and the PhD students on enhancing a vision/perception model to support autonomous drone delivery. The RA will learn the basics from DNN and transformer based perception model, and then move to the state of the art VLM. Real-world drone footage will be used for model validation.
Project 2: Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for Automated Air Traffic Control
- The RA will work with Prof. Wei and the PhD students on preparing datasets to train VLMs for automated air traffic control. The RA will learn the datasets of air traffic and air traffic control voice communication. He/she will also work on applying and even fine-tuning VLMs for automated air traffic control.
Key Responsibilities:
- Dataset preparation and processing a variety of datasets, such as images, videos, voices/speech, and trajectory data.
- Coding in Python to prompt, call API, and even fine-tune the vision language models (VLM)
- Analyzing and benchmarking VLM performance with other models
- Assisting PhD students to write research papers, and opportunities to be listed as co-authors in these research papers
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: pweigwu [dot] edu (pwei[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Political Science
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.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: wolchikgwu [dot] edu (wolchik[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Political Science
Title: Conquest and Military Diffusion
Description:
Building on a few recent papers, this is a book project about how the nature of conquest in the ancient world. One standard argument in political science scholarship is that weak states in the system emulate strong states in order to avoid conquest -- the argument of this book is that conquerors (e.g., Romans and Vikings) adopted technologies of rule (especially military technology) from subjugated peoples, and then spread that technology across the ancient world.
Key Responsibilities:
The RA will select a conqueror (e.g., the Vikings in Sicily) and create an annotated bibliography about how conquest changed the conqueror. I will help identity the case and also help you get started on the first few sources.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 1
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ericgryngwu [dot] edu (ericgryn[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
Title: State of the Capital Region 2027
Description:
The Center for Washington Area Studies writes an annual report about a topic of interest to the region. We will begin the year by choosing a topic to work on. Throughout the year we work on creating graphs that tell a data story about this issue and we have a launch event in May.
The project is usually joint with a GW professor, a Georgetown professor and a AEI scholar. The student will meet and interact with all of us in the course of producing the report.
Key Responsibilities:
The RA will do the data analysis, produce the graphics, and make the webpage for the report. Find past reports online here: https://www.
The student will use R to do this work. Prior experience with R preferred but not required.
The student will learn about how to work with multiple types of data, how to create and communicate with compelling graphics, and will gain knowledge about our topic of the year.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: lfbrooksgwu [dot] edu (lfbrooks[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Psychological and Brain Sciences
Title: Social-Cognitive Flexibility and Chronic Pain
Description:
In today’s rapidly changing world, adaptation is a critical skill that allows humans to adjust to shifting environments. Skills like cognitive flexibility help humans to adapt to ever-changing conditions. Social and cognitive psychologists use different ways to measure cognitive flexibility. Our goal is to integrate both approaches in developing a social-cognitive flexibility task. This skill can further be used in interventions helping professional and family caregivers in adapting to everyday life with chronic pain patients or family members without experiencing burnout.
In this lab, you will work on and learn about two major topics. First, this project focuses on social-cognitive flexibility, where we bring in innovative and integrative approaches to studying the social world with cognitive methodologies. Second, our primary population of focus is people living with chronic pain. We are interested in experiences, mental health, and substance use behavior among this population.. Additionally, we are interested in their social relationships and the well-being of their close ones.
Key Responsibilities:
Help with literature review and manuscript writing. Assist in designing cognitive tasks. Help with data collection, cleaning, and analysis. Learn how to use REDCap, Qualtrics, SPSS, R, and PsychoPy. Attend bi-weekly lab meetings.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 3
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ellenyeunggwu [dot] edu (ellenyeung[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: History, Africana Studies
Title: Bogle's Reminder: A Global History of Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion
Description:
Bogle's Reminder is a global story of Jamaica's 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion. After Native Baptist minister Paul Bogle marched hundreds of working-class Black folks against racial exploitation, the British colonial government responded by ruthlessly executing almost five hundred men, women, and children. Occurring decades after slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean, the political repercussions of Morant Bay circled the globe. If the Haitian Revolution promised the Black world that freedom was possible, then Morant Bay offered the caveat that even when unchained it was precarious to be Black. The Rebellion was an archive of Black international insurgency against slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism. Bogle's Reminder shows how it informed radical Black world making into the twentieth first century.
Key Responsibilities:
Students will conduct research on this project by primarily exploring digital databases (newspapers and government documents), primary documents in possession of the professor, and materials held at the Library of Congress. Students will periodically report on their finds through discussion and brief writing.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: quito [dot] swangwu [dot] edu (quito[dot]swan[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: Law
Title: EVs and national security
Description:
Research on EVs and their impact on national security.
Key Responsibilities:
Write tests and compile research.
Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 2
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: k [dot] svendsenlaw [dot] gwu [dot] edu (k[dot]svendsen[at]law[dot]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.
Department: History, Africana Studies, American Studies
Title: American Radical: Lorraine Hansberry and the Struggle to Save the United States
Description:
American Radical relates the history of the radical Black freedom movement from the Depression through the mid-1960s through analysis of the art and activism of journalist, playwright, and communist Lorraine Hansberry. Through institutions such as Freedom newspaper and the Committee for the Negro in the Arts, Hansberry was a member of a group of activist artists who pursued revolutionary social change for the benefit of the American people and the wellbeing of the world using journalism, performance art, fiction writing, and public advocacy in a range of venues. Hansberry and her circle kept alive the Black leftist vision for radically democratic social transformation despite the rise of the Cold War and domestic Red Scare and in concert with the partially muted radicalism of the renewed movement in the civil rights era.
Key Responsibilities:
An advanced undergraduate assisting to me on this project will primarily read and assess draft chapters, double check sources and citations, and help prepare the manuscript for submission.
Time commitment: 5-7 hours per week
Credit hour option*: 3
Number of openings: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: echapmangwu [dot] edu (echapman[at]gwu[dot]edu)
*If seeking academic credit, you must complete an Honors Contract before the semester deadline.