Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Cleo O’Brien-Udry

Project Summary: This project supports the creation of an in-depth dataset of World Bank projects prior to their approval. When and how do foreign aid projects get implemented? The causes and consequences of existing aid projects–geopolitics, economic development, altruism, international cooperation–depend on understanding which projects do not get implemented. Students will help build a dataset of all of the World Bank projects ever proposed across time and space to unpack these dynamics. The dataset includes four main tasks: 1) digitizing World Bank documents, 2) historical research on withdrawn projects, 3) data management and cleaning, and 4) biographical research on bureaucrats associated with different projects.

Program Details: Students complete either four (one research credit) or eight (two research credits) hours of coding or research per week (asynchronously). Biweekly meetings held in-person at time TBD.

Status: Accepting new applicants to begin immediately.

Application Process: Apply online HERE

Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Don Casler

Project Summary: This book manuscript explains foreign policy bureaucracies’ preferences regarding the use of force during crises and how those preferences can shape the leader’s decision environment. It argues that diplomatic and military organizations have distinct preferences about the use of force as a function of their bureaucratic missions: diplomats are image managers charged with cultivating their state’s reputation, whereas military officers are technicians charged with cultivating their state’s combat prowess. Student research assistants will review and hand-code historical documents.

Program Details: Students complete 7 hours of asynchronous document review and coding per week and attend a one-hour weekly meeting in-person; 8-hour total weekly commitment for 2 credit hours. New team members receive training as part of initial weekly time commitment. Multi-semester commitment highly encouraged.

Status: Accepting new applicants to begin fall 2025.

Application Process: Apply online HERE

Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Alyssa Prorok

Project Summary: During civil wars, governments and rebel groups fight each other in pitched battles, hit and run attacks, and violent repression. Yet, at the same time, these adversaries also frequently cooperate with one another, engaging in ceasefires, negotiations, and making concessions to one another. Why do rebels and governments cooperate while fighting? And what impact does such cooperation have on conflict dynamics and the likelihood of conflict resolution? Students will help answer these questions by collecting data on cooperative events between governments and rebel groups during civil wars.

Program Details: Students complete 7 hours of coding per week (asynchronously) and attend a 1-hour weekly meeting (in-person); 8-hour total weekly commitment for 2 credit hours. New team members receive training and a senior mentor. Minimum two-semester commitment strongly encouraged.

Status: Accepting new applicants to begin fall 2025.

Application Process: Apply online HERE

Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Avital Livny

Project Summary: Current understandings of the ways that diversity does – and does not – impact politics and economics is undermined by existing data: because current measures of diversity rely on government statistics, and because these government statistics are unequal in their availability and quality – uneven-ness that often reflects local politics and economics – statistical inferences may be compromised. In place of government statistics, the Global Diversity Index measures ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity using cross-national, multi-wave surveys. To account for potential measurement error in these surveys, their results are compared to high-quality census tallies, where available. Students conduct research into the ethnic, religious, and linguistic composition of countries around the world to allow for surveys and censuses to be combined and compared, helping to improve demographic statistics while also expanding our understanding of how identities are constructed and measured.

Program Details: Undergraduate researchers are part of a research team based at the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. Team members keep a regular schedule – 6 hours each week – throughout the semester and are given work space at the Cline Center, to allow for collaboration. Returning team-members help train new members, building leadership skills. In addition, Prof. Livny teaches students about the research process, supporting them in developing their own research projects over the course of 2-4 semesters. More information about the curricular component of the program is available here.

Status: Accepting new applicants to begin fall 2025.

Application Process: Apply online HERE

Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Gino Pauselli

Project Summary: When do countries adopt expansive and restrictive policies toward sexual minorities? How do countries promote and resist norms in international organizations? This project investigates the adoption of pro- and anti-LGBT policies worldwide, and the promotion of human rights within the UN Human Rights Council. Students will follow coding rules to document laws, Supreme Court rulings, and executive decrees that expand or restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people around the world. They will also systematize text-as-data available in online archives of the UN Human Rights Council, particularly statements delivered by diplomats, international organization officials and civil society advocates on multiple topics and different languages. Finally, they will also conduct research on the characteristics of foreign policy elite members.

Program Details: Students will be expected to attend one online training session at the beginning of the semester, and weekly online check-in meetings. 

Status: Accepting new applicants to begin fall 2025.

Application Process: Apply online HERE

Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Alyssa Prorok

Project Summary: This project seeks to identify, and understand the effects of, public apologies issued by rebel groups who are involved in civil conflicts. Rebels often apologize for transgressions committed during civil wars, but we know very little about why rebels apologize and what effect those apologies have on subsequent conflict behavior. To answer these questions, students will help build a cross-national dataset on the issuance of public apologies by rebels. Students will read news articles and code a variety of information contained therein about apologies made by rebel groups.

Program Details: Students complete 7 hours of coding per week (asynchronously) and attend a 1-hour weekly meeting (in-person, Fridays at 2pm); 8-hour total weekly commitment for 2 credit hours. 

Status: Accepting new applicants to begin immediately.

Application Process: Apply online HERE

Faculty Supervisor: Prof. Samantha Frost

Project Summary: Students work with Professor Frost on drafting Chapter Four, “The unencumbered self”, of her book manuscript, Use of the World. Tasks include bibliographic exploration of research databases, collation of research results, summaries of specified resources, bibliography spelunking, and discussions with Professor Frost about how the research results fit into the book’s argument. Specific topics of research include: Sir Isaac Newton’s use of frequency probability during his development of his theories of space and time; the use of frequency probability in the gambling, mathematics, insurance, law, epistemology, and theology, as well as in the development of the scientific method; the emergence of private property from discourses of common property; the rejection of complex historical causation in the development of the scientific method in the Royal Society; the rejection of complex historical causation in the development of arguments about natural law, positive law, and the rule of reason; the use of free will/reason as a civilizational litmus test in early European colonization of the rest of the world; Hobbes’s use of materialism, nominalism, and complex causation as a defense against all these developments.

Program Details: Students register for 3 credit hours and engage in the above activities for approximately 6-8 hours per week, meet together for 1-2 hours per week to coordinate and synthesize their findings, and hold a 1-2 hour weekly meeting with Professor Frost to discuss research results and emerging ideas. At the end of the semester, research assistants will write an 8-10 page essay on a related topic of their choosing. Students need to have taken courses in political theory, philosophy, or literary/cultural theory… or otherwise be able to work with abstract ideas across disciplines. 

Status: Not currently accepting applications

Application Process: NA