Project Number: 1
Faculty: Jessica N. Terman
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Case Studies in Public Administration and Third-Party Governance
Project Description: We will be putting together case studies on public administration and seeking permissions for publication.
Job Description: Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Library research, Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation
Necessary Skills: Excellent writing and proofreading skills
Project Number: 2
Faculty: Mariely Lopez-Santana
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Preparedness to Health Emergencies and Partisanship: A View from the States
Project Description: When capturing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, many scholars and pundits have pointed at the role of partisanship to explain rates of mortality, for instance. While scholars are still attempting to understand responses to the pandemic, we do not have a good sense of the preferences and behavior of parties when it comes to getting prepared and preventing health emergencies. But, do Republicans and Democrats behave differently when it comes to preventing health emergencies.
This project seeks to answer this question by paying attention to the states. As part of a collaborative project, GMU students will be working with a team of undergrads from the University of Minnesota. Students will be responsible for gathering, organizing and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data.
Job Description: Data collection, Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Library research
Necessary Skills: Microsoft Office
Project Number: 3
Faculty: Mariely Lopez-Santana
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Financial Oversight Board in the U.S. Federal System: Insights from the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis
Project Description: Prof Lopez-Santana is completing a book manuscript on the Puerto Rican debt crisis. The project is placed in the context of US fiscal federalism, especially on jurisdictions that have adopted Financial Oversight Boards when they have faced a fiscal/financial crisis. Students can refer to this article published by Dr. Lopez-Santana to get a sense of the topics covered by the book project: https://academic.oup.com/publius/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/publius/pjac037/6726206
Job Description: Data collection, writing literature summaries, library research, Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation
Necessary Skills: Solid research skills as the professor will need help with filling gaps in the manuscript (data, historical data, etc.). I want you to be kind like a detective.
Desired skills: Spanish fluency
Project Number: 4
Faculty: Ketian Zhang
Position: Assistant Professor
Title: Understanding China's Grand Strategy
Project Description: This is a book project in which I seek to examine the similarities and differences of historical rising powers' and China's grand strategies, as well as to analyze what factors caused those differences and similarities, with a focus on analyzing the role of contemporary economic interdependence.
Job Description: Data collection, Writing literature summaries, Library research, Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation
Necessary Skills: Mandarin Chinese is a bonus skill but NOT required. You don't need to be able to read Chinese as some chapters are about Japanese, US, and German grand strategies when they were rising powers (so if you know Japanese or German that'd be also great).
Project Number: 5
Faculty: Mirae Kim
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Nonprofit Organization Research Panel
Project Description: Nonprofit organizations are important contributors to the US economy and social wellbeing but lack robust, nationally representative data for research and practice. The Nonprofit Organization Research Panel (NORP) intends to fill such data gap and contributes to advancing knowledge and practice in the nonprofit sector. NORP aims to increase access to data-intensive research about nonprofit performance, and lead to more scientifically informed decision-making by nonprofit organizations, policymakers, and funders.
NORP project URA(s) will participate in recruiting nonprofits to join the panel project (which includes identifying email contact information of the selected nonprofits, preparing recruitment materials, etc.), administering periodic online surveys, and creating survey reports. During the process, URA(s) will be asked to search selected nonprofits’ websites, GuideStar, and/or other publicly available online platforms, an activity through which URA(s) can learn about a wide variety of nonprofit organizations across the US. Overall, URA(s) will learn about how to manage an online research panel, which has increasingly become popular tool for data collection, as well as how to conduct an online survey with nonprofit organizations. Depending on URB(s)' capacity, research assistants can also engage in marketing activities as well as website designs.
Job Description: Data collection, Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Support in administering experiments, recruiting subjects, or other promotions to the undergraduate population, Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation
Necessary Skills: Familiarity with Excel spreadsheets: a basic internet search skill, attention to detail, an interest in learning about various nonprofit organizations and online panel research
Desired Skills: Background or experience in the nonprofit sector, high interest in learning about various nonprofits and survey methods, prior survey research experience, and a keen eye for copy-editing errors are all desirable for this position. Some website design skills would be also preferred although not required
Project Number: 6
Faculty: Bassam Haddad
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Knowledge Production Project and Research
Project Description: The Knowledge Production Project (KPP) is a dynamic, open-access archive, search tool, and data visualization platform. It collects, catalogues, and makes available for analysis knowledge produced on the Middle East since 1979 in the English language in eight databases.
Job Description: Data collection, Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Library research
Necessary Skills: research and database management
Desired Skills: big data analysis
Project Number: 7
Faculty: Michael Hunzeker
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Mapping the Cross-Strait Military Balance
Project Description: I am trying to build a detailed map of the cross-Strait military balance. To pull this off, I need a small team of RAs who can help me scour open source documents in order to build an accurate map of American, Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese military bases, ports, airfields, radar sites, silos, urban centers, beaches, navigable waterways, MSRs, etc. This map will help support future policy research on cross-Strait security and stability.
Job Description: Data collection, Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Library research, Translation
Necessary Skills: Potential RAs should be interested in East Asian security and/or military affairs; and they must be responsible, reliable, and able to work independently.
Desired Skills: A military background, familiarity with military terminology, and/or the ability to read simplified and traditional Mandarin characters are all desirable (but certainly not required)
Project Number: 8
Faculty: Jonathan Gifford
Position: Professor & Director, Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy
Title: Infrastructure Policy and Development
Project Description: The Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy seeks undergraduate research assistants (URAs) to support its research on infrastructure policy and development.
It's an exciting time in the infrastructure world. The U.S. has passed historic levels of federal funding for infrastructure investment across all sectors, from broadband to public transit to highways to airports. Our Center focuses on how the states and localities that own most American infrastructure assets actually put such money into projects.
The Center seeks enterprising URAs who can work with Professor Gifford and the Center's team of Ph.D. and Master's students, and distinguished senior fellows to tackle the challenges of conceptualizing and delivering transformational projects. Assignments will include case studies and in-depth interviews with government and industry leaders, participating in the Center's annual forum, and collaborating on future research proposals and ideas.
One of our recent URAs writes: "My experience with the URA program was one that helped prepare me for the professional world.... I was given many opportunities to conduct research interviews with Government and industry professionals in the infrastructure industry.... The URA program is a great opportunity to take control of your education."
We welcome your interest and contributions. Our Center can provide an excellent gateway to the broad, multi-faceted, multidisciplinary world of infrastructure policy and development, and the careers and opportunities it offers.
Job Description: Writing literature summaries, Library research, Support in conducting interviews, arranging appointments for interviews, or logistics related to research of this kind, Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc.
Necessary Skills: Strong research, analytic, and writing skills. Good interpersonal skills. Ability to multitask and prioritize ongoing projects. Strong editing skills -- including proofreading, copy-editing, and substantive editing.
Desired Skills: Prior knowledge, interest, or experience in infrastructure and/or public policy.
Project Number: 9
Faculty: John Earle
Position: University Professor
Title: Unemployment and Mortality
Project Description: The project uses microdata on unemployed workers to study the impact of the large changes in unemployment insurance benefits and other state-level policies during the pandemic on job-finding, health, wages, and other outcomes.
Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc.
Necessary Skills: Internet search facility, comfort with spreadsheets, interest in policies and human outcomes.
Desired Skills: Stata, maybe Python, training in economics and econometrics.
Project Number: 10
Faculty: Lucas Nunez
Position: Assistant Professor
Title: Populism in American Politics: Towards a Unified Measuring Approach
Project Description: In recent years, political scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to populism –– especially the notion of populism defined as an ideology that separates society into a downtrodden, pure “people” and a corrupt, malevolent “elite.” Understanding populism, its characteristics, and its impacts depends heavily on our ability to measure it. This project aims to improve our ability to understand populism by contributing to better ways of measuring it. In order to do this, we will measure populism from Tweets posted by Members of Congress between 2017 and 2022 relying on a combination of hand-coded tweets and semi-supervise machine learning classification methods.
Job Description: Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc., Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation
Necessary Skills: Familiarity with Microsoft Excel (or similar)
Project Number: 11
Faculty: Lucas Nunez
Position: Assistant Professor
Title: Military Veteran Candidates at the State Level
Project Description: This project seeks to understand the electoral performance of military veterans running for seats in state legislatures. A central part of the project is identifying which candidates are veterans and which ones are not, predominantly through bio-sketches in candidates’ campaign websites. In addition to collecting veteran status information and analyzing their performance relative to non-veteran co-partisans, the project also seeks to analyze the content of campaign websites to better understand communicational, rhetorical, and policy strategies and positions taken by veterans and non-veteran candidates.
In principle, the focus of this project is on state Senate and House/Assembly candidates for the 2023 elections held in Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Depending on progress, the project may look into prior elections and/or more states.
Job Description: Undergraduate Research Assistants' work will focus mainly on data collection. But students interested in conducting statistical analysis, scraping data, or conducting automated text analysis are definitely welcome to contribute in those areas as well.
Necessary Skills: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data
Project Number: 12
Faculty: Philip Martin
Position: Assistant Professor
Title: Anti-Colonial Resistance Campaigns and Nation-Building in Africa
Project Description: This research project examines the long-run impacts of mass resistance campaigns against colonial rule in Africa on contemporary nation-building. I am seeking a research assistant to help conduct research on anti-colonial movements in Africa, including the construction of a new dataset that matches anti-colonial campaigns to local ethnic groups. The student will be expected to find and analyze historical documents and secondary scholarship on African liberation movements, and apply a coding protocol to help build the dataset.
Job Description: Data collection, Library research
Necessary Skills: Experience doing research using online repositories, scholarly databases, etc.
Desired Skills: Strong interest in African politics and/or conflict analysis is desirable.
Project Number: 13
Faculty: Jennifer Victor
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Congressional Caucuses Data Collection
Project Description: I seek to work with 2 - 4 students who will collaboratively contribute to a long-term data collection effort for recording congressional caucus memberships. Student RAs will record individual-level data in a spreadsheet from an existing source. No experience necessary. Students will also be expected to participate in weekly research lab meetings (Fridays at 4pm).
Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases;
Necessary Skills: none listed
Project Number: 14
Faculty: Jennifer Victor
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Book manuscript assistant for *Connecting Congress*
Project Description: I seek 1 - 2 research assistants to provide general support for a book manuscript in progress. The research assistant will help with discovering, reading, and summarizing literature; copy editing; project management; data collection. Students with a genuine interest in studying US Congress and strong organizational and writing skills are encouraged to apply.
Job Description: Writing literature summaries, library research, support in administering experiments, recruiting subjects, or other promotions to the undergraduate population, support in conducting interviews, arranging appointments for interviews, or logistics related to research of this kind, proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation
Necessary Skills: Organizational skills.
Desired Skills: Writing skills.
Project Number: 15
Faculty: Jennifer Victor
Position: Associate Professor
Title: Building a relational database of the US Congress
Project Description I seek 1- 2 skilled research assistants to join an existing team working to create a relational database of legislative activity from existing data. The ideal applicant has experience with, and enthusiasm, for programming in R or SQL. Students who are interested in expanding existing data science skills to applications related to legislative networks are encouraged to apply.
Job Description: Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc.
Necessary Skills: Working familiarity with at least one of the following: R, SQL, mySQL, github.
Desired Skills: Experience building a relational database; experience with tidyverse, ggplot, statnet, or igraph R packages.
Project Number: 16
Professor: Claudia Escobar
Position: Distinguished Visiting Professor
Title: US Policies to Implement Anticorruption Efforts in Central America
Project Description: The project will address efforts to confront corruption in Central America and the tools that the international community can promote to help anticorruption fighters in the region.
Job Description: Data collection, Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Translation
Necessary Skills: Bilingual English-Spanish
Desired Skills: Skills to research and networking