Project Descriptions Fall 2024

Application links available to undergraduates subscribed to the Schar listserv

 

Project Number: 1

Faculty: Michael Hunzeker

Rank: 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, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, 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.

Desirable 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: 2

Faculty: Todd La Porte

Rank: Associate Professor

Title: Cultural Heritage and Climate Change: How do climate challenges affect cultural heritage: physical sites, institutions, practices, and lifeways? What can be done to improve the chances of vulnerable cultures surviving more extreme and uncertain conditions in the future?

Project Description: Cultural heritage has come to be recognized as tangible representations and intangible practices communities nurture and affirm. These practices are essential for community survival, particularly in the face of rapid economic, social and environmental change.

Communities ratify cultural artifacts and iconic practices as central to community identity: they create monuments, parks and museums, but also protected areas, forest and agricultural regions and wildlife reserves, as well as festivals, community celebrations and the like.

In the United States there are over 429 national parks sites, nearly 7,000 state parks, and innumerable activities that bring together communities, affirm their identities and reinforce their meaning. But despite their widely accepted value, many are under threat from climate-related change. Heritage sites are like a kind canary in the mineshaft, indicators of environmental and community.

This project seeks to learn about these conflicts, which may help us understand opportunities to encourage climate action.

URAP students will help create data records of heritage sites and climate threats in the United States. They will prepare 4-12 summaries of climate challenges to heritage sites (e.g. National Registry of Historic Places, state and national parks, tribal lands, other locations with cultural significance). Summaries will include information on climate risks, on sites' cultural significance, on response plans, and will provide contact information. We will meet weekly as a group.

Summaries will help answer:

• What are the threats climate threats?
• What plans have been developed to respond?
• What resources do managers need to execute them?
• What programs or policies enable/hinder efforts to take action?

Job Description: Data collection, Writing literature summaries, Library research, Support in conducting interviews, arranging appointments for interviews, or logistics related to research of this kind, Though not required, I would love it if you can travel to a regional heritage sites (park, historic district, refuge) to take photos, record impressions. There's nothing like experiencing a cultural site in person!

 

Project Number: 3

Faculty: Bassam Haddad

Rank: Associate Professor

Title: Knowledge Production Project

Project Description: The Knowledge Production Project (KPP) is an open-access archive which aims to gather and make available for analysis all knowledge produced on the Middle East in English since 1979.

Understanding that the production of and access to knowledge is never an impartial or equitable process, the Knowledge Production Project creates new ways to identify and redress these disparities through innovative data visualizations and advanced search capacities.

The KPP archive is now informed by eleven separate databases, compiling records of: peer-reviewed journals, books, dissertations, translated books (from Arabic to English), book reviews, think tank publications, congressional testimonies, films, documentaries, television programs, and online sources.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Library research

 

Project Number: 4

Faculty: Ketian Zhang

Rank: Assistant Professor

Title: Economic Interdependence and Rising Power Grand Strategies

Project Description: Compared to historical rising powers, China does not use force as often as historical rising powers, prefers to utilize coercion instead of force, and tends to resort to nonmilitarized coercive tools. China exhibits a curious pattern of using nonmilitarized means to achieve its grand strategic ends. What explains China’s divergent path compared to historical rising powers such as the early American republic, Germany under Bismarck, and Meiji Japan? Specifically, what is the impact of global economic interdependence on rising powers’ grand strategies? Do current global production and supply chains provide different incentives to contemporary rising powers’ grand strategies? This book intends to apply theories in international political economy to examine rising powers’ grand strategic choices, comparing China’s grand strategy against historical rising powers’ grand strategies. It plans to employ qualitative methods such as process tracing and congruence testing, leveraging rich empirical evidence, including primary Chinese documents and interviews with Chinese and foreign officials, as well as historiographies, economic data, and archival documents on historical rising powers.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Writing literature summaries

Desirable Skills: Chinese/German/Japanese language skills are useful but NOT required.

 

Project Number: 5

Faculty: Jennifer Victor

Rank: Associate Professor

Title: Political Capital Manuscript Support

Project Description: I seek research support for a book manuscript in progress. The book is about the manifestation of networks among members of the US Congress and how political capital is produced from network associations. I develop a framework for understanding the production of political capital in congress and use quantitative and qualitative data to test expectations from the theory.

Job Description: Writing literature summaries, Library research, Support in conducting interviews, arranging appointments for interviews, or logistics related to research of this kind

Necessary Skills: RAs must be self-motivated and work well with limited supervision.

Desirable Skills: Zotero, MS Word reviewing

 

Project Number: 6

Faculty: Jennifer Victor

Rank: Associate Professor

Title: Congressional Network Analysis

Project Description: I seek RA support for data analysis related to a book manuscript in-progress. The book analyzes the emergence of political capital from formal and informal social networks among members of Congress. I'm looking for RAs with experience with network analysis or visualization. RAs will work with data for the book and help generate visualizations.

Job Description: Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc.

Necessary Skills: R or Python or Gephi

Desirable Skills: Familiarity with network analysis; training in data visualization

 

Project Number: 7

Faculty: Jessica N. Terman

Rank: Associate Professor

Title: Data Collection in Sports Administration

Project Description: Have you ever wanted to put together data that you are actually interested in? Are you a sports fan? This research project involves putting together datasets on the National Football League Combine data and merging it with data on the NFL draft. This is part of a larger project to create a statistics handbook of practice questions for entry level statistics for both advanced undergraduate students and graduate students in the social sciences.

Must have experience in Excel and be somewhat knowledgeable in the collection and maintenance of data.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry)

Necessary Skills: Must be familiar with data management and entry - use of Excel.

 

Project Number: 8

Faculty: Tauheeda Yasin

Rank: Faculty Fellow

Title: Fines, Fees, and Surcharges — Nationwide Database Tracking Justice System Funding

Project Description: Where do the money from parking tickets and red light cameras go? How do cities and states use that money? How do we create better systems for funding our justice system? The Fines and Fees project is creating a nationwide database tracking legal statutes related to justice fines and fees. The goal is to create a tool for lawmakers, researchers, and advocates to make more informed decisions about legal changes and funding infrastructure for the justice system. Students will help with tracking legal statutes, analyzing state-level statutes and money flows, performing analysis and creating visualizations, and for those wanting to gain tech experience, there’s an opportunity to work on SQL and LLMs for the back-end search functionality. Students interested in talking to lawmakers and attending state legislative sessions will have an opportunity to learn about advocacy and policy change.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, 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, Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc., Building searchable index using AI, talking to lawmakers about policy

Necessary Skills: Attention to detail, willingness to learn, interested in understanding the justice system

Desirable Skills: Especially looking for those interested in reading and analyzing legal codes, creating visualizations, talking to lawmakers about policy, and those interested in working on the technical aspects of the tool.

 

Project Number: 9

Faculty: Tauheeda Yasin

Rank: Faculty Fellow

Title: Mapping Elizabethan Poor Laws to Present Public Policy — The Criminalization of Poverty

Project Description: The last poorhouse closed in the 1980s. Every state had poorhouses, also called almshouses sometimes workhouses or county farms. These were places where the elderly, sick, orphaned, and homeless could go when they had nowhere else to turn. In the 1930s with the introduction of social security, these institutions began to fade. This is a forgotten history in our popular memory, but the legal and cultural imprint of these institutions remain. This project maps all of the poorhouses in the US, tracking their movement into current hospitals, elderly homes, and other institutions. Students will work to document the physical, legal, economic, and cultural shifts from the poorhouse to present policy governing homelessness. This will include trips to the Library of Congress to find buildings, maps, and other documents as well as documenting the cultural remnants. Students interested in legal statutes will work on language models of the 1600 Poor Laws tracing themes to current laws. With the recent Supreme Court case on homelessness and the legal right to sleep outside being discussed, students will gain a deeper understanding of public policy governing social welfare.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Library research, Support in administering experiments, recruiting subjects, or other promotions to the undergraduate population, Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc., Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation, Mapping, taking pictures, using LLMs on legal code

Necessary Skills: Curiosity, attention to detail, willingness to learn

Desirable Skills: Some experience using spreadsheets or a willingness to learn, ability to organize data

 

Project Number: 10

Faculty: Tauheeda Yasin

Rank: Faculty Fellow

Title: Network Mapping: Public-Private Partnerships

Project Description: Did you know the company that owns the red light cameras in Washington, D.C is also owned by the same company governing parking meters in Norway? This project focuses on network mapping of public-private partnerships. Students will organize data related to these connections and create visualizations on the connections. This analysis will help us better understand the ways the justice system is funded in not only the U.S. but globally. Students will gain skills in data management and organization, analysis, and visualization.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Library research, Support in statistical analysis, writing code, scraping data, etc., Translation, Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation

Necessary Skills: Attention to detail, curiosity, highly organized

Desirable Skills: Network analysis, database management, visualization, familiarity with financial records and documents

 

Project Number: 11

Faculty: Bonnie Stabile

Rank: Associate Professor, Gender and Policy Center Director

Title: Women and Politics Oral History Project

Project Description: The Gender and Policy Center at the Schar School of Policy and Government is establishing a Women and Politics Oral History Project to document the stories of women in politics, from grassroots activists to office holders, who became active during or after the 2017 Women’s March and #MeToo eras in the United States. In identifying, collecting and preserving the stories of women political actors and activists, we aim both to create a resource for researchers, and to provide information and inspiration for others who might aspire to be involved and impactful in the political process themselves. During this time, women have achieved unprecedented representation, as evidenced by the number of seats they occupy in the US Congress and across state legislatures, even as they face legal setbacks to their autonomy after the Supreme Court decision overturning of Roe v. Wade and subsequent state abortion bans. Though the GAP Women and Politics Oral History Project will work towards conducting and archiving interviews, in the first year it will focus on understanding the landscape of such projects in the US context, devising the structure of the project, researching and applying for funding opportunities, and establishing a database of interviewees, beginning in Virginia.

Job Description: Data collection, Coding (data entry), Managing spreadsheets or databases; organizing data, Writing literature summaries, Library research, Support in conducting interviews, arranging appointments for interviews, or logistics related to research of this kind, researching foundation support for oral histories

Necessary Skills: library and internet research

Desirable Skills: Zotero

 

Project Number: 12

Faculty: Jessica Terman

Rank: Associate Professor

Title: Contracting Case Studies in Public Administration

Project Description: This research contributes to a series of case studies on the practice of contracting-out in government. Students will do research on various contracts, comparing them across jurisdictions. The last case study compared contracts for red light cameras across cities in the United States.

Job Description: Writing literature summaries, Library research, Proofreading, editing, and/or manuscript preparation

Necessary Skills: Research, writing, proofreading