- Undergraduate Research Scholars
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IQSS offers undergraduates a unique opportunity to gain first-hand experience with an on-going, faculty-led research project. Through the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, students can find a research project that matches their interests and work closely with a faculty sponsor to move that research forward.
All student participants are considered full members of IQSS. They attend regular lunch seminars hosted by the Director of the Research Scholars Program, during which they enjoy conversations with faculty from across IQSS in a small-group setting. Students are invited to participate in numerous professional and social events throughout the year. They also present their own research experiences at a special year-end seminar or conference for the program.
Faculty sponsors personally select the undergraduate who best meets their research needs through a competitive evaluation process. They advise their students and monitor the research results. They also present their own research to all the students in the Research Scholars Program during the scheduled lunch seminars. In additional, faculty sponsors support their student researchers at the year-end seminar, serving as part of the audience.
Students involved in the Research Scholars Program are paid $12/hr and are expected to spend between three-five hours per week (minimum) with their faculty sponsor and/or research group. Undergraduates may participate in the program more than once, and are encouraged to apply in consecutive terms to continue research programs or embark upon a new project.
Undergraduates interested in participating in the Research Scholars Program should check Current Opportunities to find out which faculty are currently looking for research assistants.
- Current Opportunities
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Current Opportunities
Visualization Software in Cluster Analysis
An opportunity exists for an undergraduate to help implement visualization software for a project that is working on developing methods to facilitate discoveries in large quantities of texts. The research assistant will work closely with Gary King (David Florence Professor of Government) and a graduate student in the government department (Justin Grimmer) in developing software to accompany a soon-to-be-completed paper that proposes a new approach to cluster analysis. As a working version of the program exists in the R programming language, the research assistant's primary task will be to export the code and create an easy-to-use package for the program. Knolwedge of JAVA programming language is preferable but not required. Strong preference for a computer science concentrator. The work will start as soon as the candidate is available and could extend for some time as there are various extensions that are planned to be added. The research assistant would ideally work 10-15 per week, but there is flexibility available to match the undergraduate's schedule.
Please send a cover letter and resume to execdir@iq.harvard.edu if you are interested in this position.
- Research in Progress
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Research in Progress
Intangible Approval: International Responses to State Ratification of Human Rights Agreement
John Sheffield is working on a project with Professor Beth Simmons and graduate student Richard Nielsen on the inducements states are given to ratify international human rights agreements. John's work involves collecting reports of intangible reactions of foreign governments to ratification, including praise, recognition, and invitations to meet or to join various organizations or groupings. He will be downloading and developing a computerized search technique for reactions to such ratifications, and he will assist in training and assessing the computerized coding process. We hope to find out whether states actually earn kudos for participating in international human rights regimes, as much of the literature assumes.
- Sponsoring Faculty Member - Beth A. Simmons
- Undergraduate Research Scholar - John Sheffield
The Magnitude and Bias of Statistical Errors within a Geographically Denominated Area: Analyzing the Violence Following Kenya's Elections of December 2007
We aim to gather and analyze diverse data sets, using GIS technology, to test hypotheses about the sources of violence in Kenya following the elections of December 2007. We have data on ethnicity, land status (tenants, squatter, land owner), income, migration status, and partisan affiliation. Some comes from surveys, others from polling stations, and still others from administrative reports. The best way of interrelating this data is by exploiting common spatial attributes.
- Sponsoring Faculty Member - Robert H. Bates
- Undergraduate Research Scholar - Jitka Tomas
A Question of Civic Engagement: Comparing the Role of Religion in America and Britain
America and Britain present an interesting paradox with regards to religion and other forms of civic engagement. In America, civic engagement has declined but religious activity is stable, while in Europe civic engagement has largely remained stable while religious activity has declined. Thus the question arises, what is it about the role of religion in America compared to Britain that makes it so distinct from other forms of civic participation? Or, framed another way, what is it about religion in Britain that allows religious activity to fall below other forms of civic participation? This is the central question driving our research.
Using original data from Faith Matters, a survey distributed in the US in the years 2006 and 2007, as well as in Britain, and with a sample size of nearly 2,200, our research investigates whether religious participation yields certain benefits or kinds of social capital distinct from what is generated by secular forms of civic participation more generally: benefits of social capital that are needed more in one society but not the other, depending on social structures or government provisions. In general, exploring and comparing the role of religion with regards to civic engagement in both America and Britain will shed light on the classic and still largely unanswered question of cross-national variations in religious vitality.
- Sponsoring Faculty Member - Robert D. Putnam, Thomas Sander
- Undergraduate Scholar - Nan Ransohoff
- Past Research
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Past Research
Politics of Exchange Rates: The Gold Standard in the United States, 1865-1935
- Sponsoring Faculty Member - Jeff Frieden
- Undergraduate Research Scholar - Vikram Modi
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