Communication Abilities of Children with Cochlear Implants [Research Assistant]

Professor: James Mahshie
Department: Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
Title: Research on communication abilities of children with cochlear implants
Description: The goal of work in my lab is to better understand a range of abilities exhibited by children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants. The research addresses questions associated with speech production, speech perception and literacy. Work involves obtaining speech samples from children for analysis, along with a range of related measures that inform us about listening experience, social economic status, residual hearing, etc.
NOTE: Dr. Mahshie will be away in the Fall semester and is looking for someone in the Spring.
Duties:

  1. Designing and running experiments; Recruiting participants
  2. Participating in data collection
  3. Analysis of data, including transcription
  4. Maintaining lab paperwork including IRB protocols
  5. Maintaining lab equipment.

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: jmahshie@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.

The Foreign of Brazil: From Discourse to the Facts [Research Assistant]

Professor: Diego Abente Brun
Department: Elliott School of International Affairs
Title: The Foreign of Brazil: From the Discourse to the Facts
Description: This project consists of following up the foreign policy decisions and positions of the Bolsanaro government and explore the congruence/incongruence between words and deeds. Especial emphasis will be paid to relations with Argentina. It implies also to compare and contrast his government’s foreign policy with that of previous governments and includes the analysis of the role of key institutions, chiefly Itamaraty, but also private actors such as business associations, the Congress, civil society organizations and the media.
Duties:
1. To identify key issue-areas.( In close consultation with the Instructor)
2. To collect data and review the literature. (Portuguese and Spanish reading language proficiency required)
3. To trace and underline the difference and similarities with previous official positions.
4. To explore the likely course of events in the future.
5. To conclude with a summary of the key findings, the risks and opportunities they offer, and policy recommendations for other foreign actors such as the United States, Europe, and regional actors.
6. The project will be discussed with the instructor and may be adjusted based on the student’s interests.
Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dabente@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.

Children's Musician-Education Ella Jenkins [Research Assistant]

Professor: Gayle Wald
Department: American Studies
Title: Children’s Musician-Educator Ella Jenkins
Description: I am researching and writing about Ella Jenkins, the most important children’s musician of the 20th century. At 95, Jenkins has released more than 40 albums on the independent Folkways record label. She has won a Grammy and been deemed a “national treasure” and the “first lady of children’s music.” Jenkins wrote liner notes (written texts) to go along with every one of her albums. They are a rich literary archive of her thinking as an African American woman whose career was shaped by civil rights and anti-fascism. I am looking for someone to collect all of these texts and perform a content analysis of them.
Duties: The RA will collect Jenkins’s digitized liner notes (written texts that accompanied each of her albums) and perform a content analysis of them. What are the themes that run through these texts? What turns up as quirky or unusual? How does Jenkins tell a story about herself in these texts? How do her themes change over time?
If you are interested in US cultural history and woman’s and African American history, this will be a fun project. This is a project that will allow you to use skills in literary/ textual /cultural analysis.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: gwald@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.

The Famous Ape [Research Assistant]

Professor: Holly Dugan

Department: English

Title: The Famous Ape

Description: My current book project, “The Famous Ape” argues that there is much to learn about our history from studying how we’ve treated our closest animal relatives: apes. In it, I trace the simian celebrities renowned in their own time period for aping our best and worst qualities, many of whom paid dearly for having such skills. My title comes from Hamlet’s odd allusion in that play’s famous closet scene, an allusion that is as confusing as it is intriguing. In it, Hamlet warns his mother not to be “like the famous ape,” who sought “to try conclusions.”  Despite Hamlet’s specificity (he uses the definite article) and his conviction that the lessons of this example are well known, no one seems to know a thing about the so-called “famous” ape. Gertrude leaves the scene convinced of Hamlet’s madness, and most critics do, too. My book takes a different approach, addressing that absence directly by seeking to trace the forgotten history of various “famous apes” from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, all of whom were quite well known in their own time, and who were used to “try” conclusions about human and animal boundaries, but who are now mostly forgotten and excluded from our histories of modernity.

Because I’ve found more examples than I can address in the book, I am building a public humanities website to share this information, which is comprised of brief biographies of each “famous ape.” My hope is that in seeing the repetition latent in these histories and by learning more about these creatures as individuals, readers will come to their own ethical conclusions about these entertainment practices.

Duties: All that’s needed is a willingness to learn more about historical research and animal history.

Research tasks may include 1. primary research in newspaper archives of the 19th and 20th century (depending on students’ skills & interest); managing a public-facing humanities research account linked to the project (ie, summarizing research and drafting content for blog posts; strategizing about promotion across platforms; acquiring image rights); building/maintaining research database.

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

Credit hour option*: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: hdugan@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.

Rebel Group Formation in Sub-Saharan Africa [Research Assistant]

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.