Summer Research College (SRC)
The Department of Political Science is pleased to announce summer research positions for undergraduates.
Summer Research College is designed to foster close intellectual exchange by involving students in the ongoing research of Stanford professors. Participants will work directly with a faculty mentor for ten weeks and receive a $7,500 stipend. There may be an additional supplement based on financial need. Students also have the opportunity to attend optional research training seminars to learn additional skills throughout the summer. Projects will be done in person on campus.
Eligibility:
Participants must be current undergraduates at Stanford. Co-term students and seniors are eligible only if the bachelor’s degree will not be conferred before the end of the research appointment.
Student athletes should confirm the impact of any awarded stipend on their athletic eligibility by contacting the Compliance Services Office prior to applying.
Expectations:
Student participation is expected to be 40 hours per week during the program dates June 24 through August 30, 2024. The program is in person on campus. Students and faculty will present their collaborative research in lunchtime seminars that will take place twice per week. Students are expected to attend all lunchtime presentation seminars.
Stipend:
Each student will receive a stipend of $7,500 with additional funding available based on financial need.
Restrictions:
The department does not offer course credit for Summer Research College. Students planning to take Summer courses may not enroll in more than 5 credits and must get prior approval from the faculty member with whom they are working.
Housing:
For students who want to apply for on-campus summer housing, room, board, house dues, and other academic expenses are paid by the student. Students are responsible for paying their university summer bill, which will include any other academic expenses incurred. Students may review the summer room and board rates on the Housing Assignment Services website.
How to Apply:
Click on the preference form and use it to express your preference regarding faculty mentors and research projects. Please attach your cover letters, resume, and unofficial transcript to this preference form. If your application is approved, someone will contact you to set up an interview. The department is only accepting applications via the link above.
Click for cover letter guidelines.
For any questions, please email Margaux Leivenberg (margauxl [at] stanford.edu (margauxl[at]stanford[dot]edu)).
Deadline:
Monday, February 5, 2024 at 5pm. Students are encouraged to apply early.
2024 Summer Research Opportunities
Project Descriptions
States and Social Hierarchies in the Arab Gulf Region
Professor Lisa Blaydes
With a total GDP of over $3.5 trillion, the Arab Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) loom large with regard to transnational flows of people, capital, and commodities. About 60 million people live in the six states, about half of whom are expatriates. The Arab Gulf states are some of the largest oil producers in the world and all six countries are monarchies. Yet despite the political and economic significance of the region, Arab Gulf states have been largely ignored by the field of comparative politics, under-represented in both quantitative and qualitative studies. In this project, we will explore the politics of Arab Gulf societies, both past and present, with a focus on understanding social classes and class hierarchies. Student researchers will be responsible for collecting data and writing literature reviews related to these topics. We are seeking students with an interest in political science, history, or sociology as well as quantitative research methods or a regional interest in the Middle East and Muslim societies. Knowledge of Arabic is a plus but not required.
Tracking Campaign Donations by Important Political Elites in the Run-Up to the 2024 Election
Professor Adam Bonica
The Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections (DIME) is a widely used resource for academics studying campaign finance and elections. The role will entail helping to identity and track campaign donations made by important political actors, such as judges, CEOs, members of the Forbes 400, and congressional candidates. Experience working with R is preferable.
How has Congressional Responsiveness to Campaign Donors Changed across Time?
Professor Brandice Canes-Wrone
The project examines how the association between donor opinion and congressional roll call voting has evolved over time. To analyze this question systematically, we will collect historical public opinion data going back at least 50 years on a range of policy issues in addition to corresponding data on roll call voting. The student's primary responsibility will be to collect historical public opinion data and data on congressional roll call voting from established databases. For students with sufficient background in statistics, some data analysis work can be incorporated. Additionally, the student may be asked to summarize existing research.
Demonization as a Political Strategy
Professors Gary Cox and Jonathan Rodden
Professors Cox and Rodden are working on a series of articles and a book about efforts of political party leaders and message-makers in the United States. An important observation is that the American political parties are internally very heterogeneous—and becoming more so over time. As a result, they face weaker incentives to highlight the policy positions of their own party, and growing incentives to characterize the proposals of the out-party as extreme. Summer researchers will help develop strategies for using large bodies of text—including the Congressional record, partisan cable news, and other sources—to identify the emergence of efforts by party leaders and media allies to characterize the out-party as extreme in specific issue areas. Students will scrape and clean data sets and learn to implement existing techniques for using text as data. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in data science and ideally, using text as data.
Culture and Identity Change on the Path to Modernization
Professor Vicky Fouka
How does economic change and structural transformation influence prevalent identities, societal values and ideologies? This question is of first order importance today, when economic forces such as globalization and labor migration are linked to political polarization and the strengthening of nationalism. We can learn from similar processes that have occurred in the recent past. This project turns to the 19th century, a period of rapid industrialization and modernization across Europe, to understand how structural change influences society. Research assistants will clean and analyze large textual corpora from 19th century newspapers, to track changes in ideas - among others, views on slavery and paid labor - and identities, such as nationalist and class cleavages. A strong background in data science and text as data methods is desired. Besides data analysis, the research assistant may be asked to prepare targeted literature reviews and read through historical news articles. The ideal candidate will have an interest in history and using statistical methods to quantify social dynamics in the long-run.
The Impact of Refugee and Migration Policies and Programs in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America
Professors Jens Hainmueller, David Laitin, and Jeremy Weinstein
We are seeking up to four students to assist in the Immigration Policy Lab’s research on the impact of migration policies in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. IPL has several projects underway, including an evaluation of a refugee livelihoods program in East Africa; a study on the impact of state and local policies on immigrant intergenerational health in the U.S.; an application of a machine-learning algorithm to match refugees and immigrants in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to locations where they are most likely to thrive; a project on the reintegration of deportees in Honduras; and a study examining the impact of remittance-sending on climate adaptation and resilience in Central America. The research assistants will be responsible for developing and drafting literature reviews, data collection (quantitative and qualitative), data coding (of policies and interventions), data analysis, and producing journal-quality graphics and tables. Students will be fully welcomed into the Immigration Policy Lab for the summer, which includes weekly lab meetings with faculty, staff, and students to learn about IPL projects, along with a weekly reading group/speaker series, where they will read leading research on migration policy to learn about new methods and applications and to further explore their own individual interests. This is a great opportunity to experience working in a multidisciplinary applied policy research lab with multiple projects. Interest in migration is a must, and a background in social science and statistics is preferred.
War & Women on the Borders of Europe Then & Now
Professor Katherine Jolluck
Seeking a student assistant to research women's experiences in the Second World War in Poland and Ukraine, and both Ukrainian and Russian women in the current Russo-Ukrainian War. I am particularly interested in recent scholarship and documents from the region itself, so knowledge of Polish and Ukrainian is a must; ability to read Russian a plus. Work with primary sources in the Hoover Institution Archives is also a possibility. The student will compile bibliographies of Polish- and Ukrainian-language scholarship, take notes on and write brief summaries of the items read, and write essays on current knowledge and interpretations of women's involvement in war in the separate countries. This work will contribute to a book project examining the diverse experiences of women during the wars in Eastern Europe of the past and current centuries.
Artificial Intelligence and Deterrence
Professor Colin Kahl
The Artificial Intelligence and Deterrence Project examines how recent developments in AI contribute to deterrence. In particular, it focuses on the role AI systems (e.g., AI sensors, AI/ML-enabled big data analytics, LLMs, autonomous systems, etc.) can play in what the 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy calls “deterrence by denial” (thwarting an adversary's aggressive military operations) and “deterrence by resilience” (limiting the effect of adversary effects on military networks). Students applying to be an RA on the project should have experience analyzing AI systems and a basic understanding of core concepts in international relations and national security.
Does the Supreme Court Represent the Public?
Professor Neil Malhotra
Since 2020, I have been conducting annual surveys of the American public in the spring, asking them how they would vote on upcoming cases the Supreme Court was considering. The findings from these studies are published every summer in the New York Times. We are working on a book that will summarize the survey data from a five-year period (2020-2024), during a time when the Court has seen major changes to its composition, and the public's approval of the Court has plummeted. Although we generally find that the Court is located to the right of the public, this varies in interesting ways over time. In addition to general research assistance associated with writing the book (looking up and summarizing literature, historical analyses), we would need help designing and producing the figures and tables that will constitute the book. Prospective RAs should have an interest in law and the courts, as well as basic statistical programming skills (R, Stata) for assistance in generating publication-quality figures and tables.
Great Power Competition Between Russia, China, and the United States in the 21st Century and Its Impact Around the World
Professor Michael McFaul
Professor Michael McFaul is looking to hire two student research assistants to support a book project about great power relations and competition between China, Russia, Europe, and the United States as well as its impact around the world. The research assistant should be prepared to work both individually and collaboratively with Professor McFaul's Research Assistants on thematic and historical chapters that discuss themes such as power, ideology, multilateralism, and interdependence in the 21st century. Previous research and writing experience, fluency in Russian or Mandarin, and demonstrated interest in Russia or China are preferred.
Stalin’s Terror, 1930-1953
Professor Norman Naimark
The project examines the dramatic period of Stalin's terror in the 1930s. Students will reconstruct the major episodes of the period, when possible using primary documents in the Hoover Archives or published. Each student will be assigned a particular aspect of the terror to investigate. They will be responsible for taking notes on what they have read, and for writing a short essay on what they have learned from their research. Students with a reading knowledge of Russian and/or Ukrainian will be given preference, but there is much English-language material to be examined, as well. The final product will be a comprehensive book on the subject.
Elevating Elected Women’s Voices in Indian Politics and Policymaking
Professor Soledad Prillaman
How can we facilitate India’s transition from gender parity in governance to gender equality in governance? Despite widespread policies aimed at gender equality, women remain poorly represented in politics and policy in India. Our research team seeks to 1) understand the barriers to women’s substantive political representation in India, and 2) identify and evaluate the optimal set of solutions to support women elected representatives and link them with their women constituents. We’re seeking an undergraduate research assistant with an intermediate to advanced skill level in Stata or R to assist us with data analysis over the summer of 2024. This student will analyze new survey data to identify the factors that shape gendered political engagement and behavior as elected representatives. The student will additionally be asked to translate the results of this analysis into a series of reports and policy briefs. In addition to this quantitative analysis, this student researcher may additionally work with qualitative observational data to produce a report on the results of a micro-pilot of interventions to build the capacity of women elected representatives. The student researcher’s analysis efforts over the summer of 2024 will be directly translated into the refinement of a final set of pilot interventions to elevate the voices of elected women representatives that will be scaled up in the fall of 2024.
Public Opinion, Just War, and Hiroshima
Professor Scott Sagan
I am looking for three students to help with two related projects: 1) I will be conducting a survey experiment on US public support for targeting civilians in war including the use nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945 and will need students to code the open ended responses from respondents; 2) I will need literature review memos written on the evolution of just war doctrine and the laws of armed conflict regarding "supreme emergency," "non-combatant immunity" and "reasonable prospect of success." I am looking for students who are highly motivated and willing and able to work both independently and in teams. Some background gained in courses like Intro to IR, International Security in a Changing World, and/or The Rules of War would be helpful, but not a requirement.