Category: Research Assistant Opportunity

Professor: Kerric (AKA Lisa St. Clair) Harvey

Department: School of Media and Public Affairs

Title: Drama for Social Change:  The “Whisper” Project

Description: Deepening the material already launched by my previous empirical
work adapting traditional “Drama for Conflict Transformation” for use within
a 21st century digital environment, the “Whisper Project” uses a combination
of in-person, live audience theatrical methods and online/digital/Web-based
venues to explore how the performing arts can inform and elevate public
discourse around flammable political issues and events. Specifically, the
project entails producing a purpose-built one act play for use with an
intentional audience (one which is carefully constructed of stakeholders from
different sectors of a conflict situation) and then using social media and
digital platforms generate and collect ethnographic information about the
cultural belief structures that undergird political attitude, and which are
elicited as part of the live performance experience. The play, entitled
“Whisper on a Distant Wind,” is already written, and is an especially timely
production on the eve of another presidential election cycle, as it recounts
the interactions of four modern day “Tea Party” members when they suddenly
find themselves transported back to George Washington’s 18th century Mount
Vernon plantation.  This project extends and enhances “The Interrogation
Project” work which I conducted in 2016, and which followed a similar
procedureisper.”  I successfully presented my findings from “The
Interrogation Project” at a Royal Anthropology Institute/British Museum
conference and hope to do the same thing with  “Whisper.”

Duties: Research and logisticall support during pre-production phase;
assistance with casting, venue procurement, and grant-writing if we take the
project off-campus; working with the professor to assure that all legal
aspects of a project like this are in conformance with University policy as
well as with routine best practices; identifying, securing, and accessing
appropriate and realistic digital and online platforms; helping to design the
specific data collection instruments and conflict resolution materials needed
during the post-production phase; providing technical, operational, and
creative support and outreach as needed; other duties as appropriate and
desirable.  Some assistance with costumes, props,script readings, front of
house, and similar theatrical responsibilities; also some basic video and or
audio recording work (professor will help train if needed.)

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

Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: kharvey@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Imani Cheers

Department: SMPA

Title: Agricultural Apartheid: Land & Water Rights/Reform in South Africa,
Namibia and Palestine

Description: “Agricultural Apartheid is a multimedia virtual reality project
and forthcoming book focusing on
Palestinian, South African and Namibian farmers. The goal is to discuss land
and
water rights issues impacting women living in the aforementioned countries
through cutting edge technology.

Duties: 1.  Conduct and compile background research on each country both
online and at Gelman Library
2. Work at least 2 hours per week at the Library of Congress main reading
library, reviewing materials and identifying pertinent information.
3. Support professor’s schedule and maintain appointments pertaining to
research project.

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

Credit hour option*: 2

Number of openings: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: imanimcheers@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Yvonne Captain

Department: RGSLL

Title: ” ‘African’ Surnames in the Americas”

Description: The project concerns research on families with last names that
date from trans-Atlantic slavery and carry on until the present day in both
the United States and in Latin America.  Family Names like Senegal, Congo,
Africano, and Angola are far more common than most people assume.  Through
personal interviews, data collection in various sources, information on the
families is garnered.  A series of questions are communicated, typically in
person, to each of the interviewees in order to see what the Brazilian,
Colombian, and U.S. families have in common as we draw conclusions related to
the African Diaspora.

Duties: The 1st student will input raw data as it already exists into the
database, and if there is time, will help the professor with research that
contributes to further data.  Student will also help maintain contact with
the professor’s  co-investigator colleagues in Brazil and Colombia.
The 2nd student will aid in analyzing Excel queries that are already set up
by the professor and that will be further enhanced by student #1.  Some
knowledge of databases beyond beginning status-or the willingness to
learn is best for student #2
While no knowledge of the Spanish or Portuguese languages is necessary, it
does not hurt!
If either student prefers to work on a non-credit basis, we can consult with
the Honors Program to see what the best option is.

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

Credit hour option*: 3

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ycaptain@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Chris Warshaw

Department: Political Science

Title: The Ideological Positions of Democratic and Republican State Party
Platforms in the United States

Description: In this project, I am working with a team of researchers to code
the ideological positions of Democratic and Republican state parties in all
fifty states over the past 50 years using 1,800 individual party platforms
from 1960-2016.  These platforms include the state parties’ positions on
dozens of policy issues, including gay rights, abortion, climate change, gun
controls, and many more.  This project will shed new light on the historical
development of party positions.  It will also speak to debates about
polarization and representation (i.e., the links between public opinion and
political parties).

Duties: The research assistant(s) will read Democratic and Republican state
party platforms to help me code the issue positions of Democratic and
Republican state parties in the United States over the past 50 years. They
will code each state party’s position on issues like gun control, abortion,
climate change, taxes, women’s rights, and many more. This project will give
research assistant(s) the opportunity to learn more about the development of
the American party system. It also give them the opportunity to learn more
about dozens of policy issues, and the positions of political parties on
these issues.

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

Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 4

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: warshaw@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

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: mylonas@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Janet Lewis

Department: Political Science

Title: Rebel Group Formation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Description: How does armed rebellion start? Answering this question is
critical to understanding how the costly, more violent stages of conflict may
be averted. However, existing evidence about the earliest phases is highly
incomplete, especially for weak states in Sub-Saharan Africa. Rebel groups
that fail early, before committing substantial violence, are usually omitted
since they end before gaining substantial attention in news media. This
project aims to advance knowledge about rebel group formation by building a
dataset of nearly all rebel groups that formed, even minimally so, in
Sub-Saharan Africa since the late 1990s.

Duties: The Research Assistant(s) will work under the supervision of the PI
to build the dataset. This will involve digging for tough-to-find
information, careful reading and analyzing African and international news
sources (mostly newspapers), as well as occasionally identifying and speaking
(via Skype) with African scholars and journalists. The RA will learn a great
deal about political violence, Africa, and the craft of thinking carefully
about how best to analyze complex political issues in remote contexts.

Desired Skills and Qualifications:
•       Outstanding research, verbal communication and writing skills
•       Detail-oriented and able to work independently
•       Ability to read and speak in French is desirable (not required)
•       Prior experience living/studying/working in Africa is desirable (not
required)
•       Experience building and using quantitative datasets is desirable (not
required)

Please note: there are two openings for this role!

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

Credit hour option*: 3

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: janetilewis@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna Crayton at bcrayton@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

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: przytyck@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Luis Ballesteros

Department: International Business

Title: Deglobalization, economic disintegration and firm performance

Description: Multinationalism helps firms access suppliers and consumers
spatially dispersed. It can increase labor productivity (Martin et al. 2017),
administrative capacity (Acemoglu et al. 2007), knowledge spillovers (Alcacer
and Chung 2007, Javorcik 2004), innovation (Knott and Turner 2019), and
foster economies of scale (Alfaro et al. 2018) and competitive advantages
(Berry 2014). A line of research has also associated multinationalism with
risk diversification. Hence, multinational firms cope with shocks better than
domestic firms such as natural disasters (Oetzel and Oh 2014) or financial
crises (Aghion et al. 2016).

The general discourse in which these arguments have flourished and been
tested is the continuous globalization of markets and production. In recent
years, however, antiglobalization processes have resulted in actual or
potential threats to international trade and investment. One can argue that
multinational firms may be more vulnerable than domestic firms to suffer the
consequences of economic disintegration (Boehm 2014). Theoretically, this is
unclear because multinational firms may adjust easier to the closeness of
national markets via reallocation of resources and a higher ability to move
operations to a different country (Alfaro and Chen 2012, Mata and Woerter
2013).

We seek to solve this debate by focusing on the case of Brexit. The Brexit
Referendum in 2016 is not a direct shock to economic integration, but it is a
rise in environmental uncertainty whose effect on the Global Economic Policy
Uncertainty (Baker et al. 2016, Davis 2016)is higher than any other systemic
shock in recent history (see graph). Uncertainty shocks can drop investment,
labor demand, productivity, and growth (Baker and Bloom 2013).

Duties: 1.      Manage research projects by controlling deadlines, monitoring
resources and goal progress, and supervising team members
2.      Being a liaison between the principal investigators and other members of
the research team
3.      Assist in completing administrative tasks related with the research
projects
4.      Conducting library and electronic database research
5.      Produce visual and written research reports for internal and external
distribution
6.      Participate in designated research team meetings

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

Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 3

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ballesteros@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Arie Dubnov

Department: History

Title: Amos Oz’s Two Pens: Literature, politics, and the making of an
Israeli Intellectual

Description: The Israeli novelist and essayist Amos Oz, who died on December
28th, 2018, was an icon of an Israeli cultural elite.  Born in mandatory
(pre-statehood) Jerusalem, he became known, especially since the mid-1960s,
the leader of a new generation of native-born Israeli authors and
intellectuals. Exceptionally productive, Oz’s literary output included 40
books, predominantly works of prose (for both children and adults), that has
been translated into more than 30 languages and is internationally acclaimed.
His autobiographical novel, A Tale of Love and Darkness, was instantly
canonized (and even adapted to cinema by Natalie Portman), not only due to
its unique literary qualities but also because it was recognized as a
personal story which is, at the very same time, tells the saga of a nation.
After the 1967 War, Oz has been active in the Israeli peace movement and with
groups and organizations that advocate a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has been a spokesman for the Peace Now
movement since its founding in 1977 and endorsed the activities of the NGO
Breaking the Silence.  Oz’s writings, which included numerous works of
non-fiction, showcased this duality. In these writings, he expressed his
unyielding political commitments and distinctive moralist voice. Oz famously
claimed that and again that his literary and political writings belong to
different, separate compartments. Known for writing with a pen, not a
computer, he referred to it using the two pens metaphor: “I have two pens
on my desk. One black and one blue. One I use to tell stories and the other
to tell the government to go to hell – and I never mix them. I have never
written a novel in order to tell the Israelis to get out of the occupied
territories . . . I write novels for the same reasons I dream: I have to
dream. I have no choice. And I have to write novels. I have no choice. Novels
for me have never been a political vehicle. When I want to make a statement,
I write an article.”
A short time after Oz’s passing I was invited by the editors of The Journal
of Israeli History (JIH) to serve as a guest editor of a special issue in
memory of Amos Oz z”l. Distributed by Taylor & Francis, JIH is committed to
bringing cutting-edge scholarship by senior as well as young scholars to an
international audience. In recent years, the journal reflected extremely well
the significant changes that the field of Israel Studies undergone, taking on
transnational, international, and comparative perspectives, engaging with a
variety of methodologies aside from traditional political history, and
conceiving of Israel/Palestine as a historical unit, albeit a deeply divided
one. Following this spirit, I jumpstarted a preliminary research and reached
out to leading scholars from a variety of disciplines (including history,
comparative literature, cultural criticism) who will contribute articles to
the special issue, that pay attention to the historical, cultural and social
analysis of Oz’s oeuvre alongside literary criticism. Tentatively entitled
“Amos Oz’s Two Pens”, the special issue will examine and assess Amos
Oz’s dual role in Israeli culture and society, as an immensely popular
novelist as well as a leading public intellectual. As part of this effort, it
will revisit and problematize the “two pens” metaphor, looking at the way
in which literary sensibilities influenced Oz’s politics and vice versa –
the ways in which he inserted Israeli history and politics into his works of
fiction.

Duties: The Research Assistant (RA) will help Prof. Dubnov prepare a special
issue dedicated to Oz for The Journal of Israeli History (JIH). The main
tasks will include:
1.      Reading and commenting on article submissions. The articles are written by
scholars who work in the field of history and/or comparative literature.
2.      Checking footnotes and incomplete citations, and, when needed, finding
missing citations in Oz’s translated publications in English.
3.      Research, find and reproduce rare materials from the Library of Congress
and/or GWU’s Gelman Library (including, possibly, rare photos).
4.       Identify and survey historiography (historical literature) dealing with
Oz’s work and its reception in the English-speaking world.

Required skills:
•       Good oral and written communication skills.
•       Holding a Library of Congress reader’s card.
•       Familiarity with JSTOR and conducting research in online databases.
•       Familiarity with Dropbox and Google drive.

Knowledge of Hebrew and/or Israeli culture is preferable but not required.

I’d be extremely happy to find a student interested in this topic who loves
working on the intersection of history and literature. I am open to the
possibility of an independent study as well that will allow the student to
gain extra credit, after writing his/her own research essay on the subject.

Time commitment: Flexible

Credit hour option*: Flexible

Number of openings: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dubnov@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Theo Christov

Department: History

Title: The Reception of Emer Vattel’s Works in Modern International Relations
and International Law

Description: The goal for this project is to trace the influence of the 18th
century political thinker Emer Vattel on the development of international
relations and international law in the 20th century. Particular attention
will be paid on the following questions: the idea of a just war, birthright
citizenship, diplomatic exchange, and the law of nations. For anyone
interested in the history of political thought and ideas, or the development
of international law and international relations in the 20th century, this
project would be ideal. the ultimate goal is to assist with writing an
article (for an edited volume under contract with Cambridge University
Press).

Duties: The role of the research assistant will be to compile a list of
sources, primarily articles and book chapters on the topic, before providing
a brief summary of each. The use of analytical skills to distill through
various sources of information and systematize themes of Vattel’s influence
on the conduct of international relations.

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

Credit hour option*: 2

Number of openings: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: christov@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.