Undergraduate Research and Creative Collaborations

Faculty Name: Sophia Malamud 

Faculty Email:  smalamud@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Associate Professor of Linguistics 

Faculty Department or Program: Linguistics/Computer Science 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5 

Project Title: Researching immigrant language using the BiRCh corpus 

This research assistant position will support Professor Malamud.  

Project Summary 

A team of researchers at Brandeis has created a grammatically annotated audio-aligned corpus of language produced by children acquiring Russian in monolingual and bilingual contexts. Using this unique database, we are conducting several research projects into the language of immigrants and their children, passive and impersonal constructions, requests, questions, and subjunctives. We are about to make this data freely available online for the use of other researchers, educators, and parents. Though the language of immigrant communities is often stigmatized and deprecated (even by its speakers), it is of central importance to the cultural identity and practices of these communities, and its study is crucial to an understanding the fundamental properties of linguistic knowledge, language acquisition and maintenance, and bilingualism.  

Position Description 

An undergraduate research assistant will support publication of the data while familiarising themselves with the database and its features, and then help in the grammatical analysis of the data as part of one or more studies. This may include marking grammatical features of words, making judgements on whether a construction is acceptable to native speakers, and potentially applying simple statistical analysis. This project requires native or near-native fluency in Russian. The student does not have to have a background in linguistics, but ideally would be generally interested in language. 

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

Being a member of a research team; working with Zotero to organise research literature; creating research meeting notes; understanding the structure and functions of online corpora; linguistic analysis of Russian language data 

Faculty Name: Vardit Ringvald 

Faculty Email:  ringvald@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Research Professor, Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education 

Faculty Department or Program: Brandeis Hebrew Consortium for the Teaching of Hebrew Language and Culture 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5 

Project Title: Balancing Dual Roles: Hebrew Teachers as Jewish/Israel Educators and Language Instructors Post-October 7th 

 This research assistant position will support Professor Ringvald. 

Project Summary 

On October 7th, Hebrew educators, many of whom are Israelis, found themselves positioned as authentic resources in both formal and informal settings concerning the horrific events and their aftermath. Students and colleagues viewed them as representatives of the Israeli experience, expecting them to provide insights into the political state in the Middle East, the characteristics of terror groups, and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—all while these educators were themselves in emotional turmoil, fearing for their loved ones and grappling with existential crises about Israel's future. Our qualitative study aims to understand how these educators navigated these challenges and to learn from their experiences.Through focus groups, interviews, including a literature review, we aim to uncover how Hebrew teachers adapted or maintained their teaching strategies to help students comprehend and cope with the tragedy of October 7th. By gathering insights from Hebrew instructors in diverse settings, we hope to shed light on their perceptions of the most effective methods to support their students during this challenging time.  

Position Description 

The research assistant will play a crucial role in supporting a study focused on the experiences of Hebrew language educators following the events of October 7th. Specific contributions will include: 

• Conducting qualitative data research by analyzing responses from focus groups and interviews with educators.
• Entering collected data into spreadsheets and managing the data effectively.
• Finding and evaluating source materials at Brandeis libraries and on the Internet to support the research.
• Analyzing and summarizing research materials, helping to build a comprehensive understanding of the educators' experiences.
• Compiling bibliographies and checking references to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the research.
• Assisting with proofreading and editing written work, contributing to the clarity and coherence of the final reports.
• Conducting literature reviews to identify gaps in existing research and inform the study’s framework.
• Applying ethical guidelines, including ensuring informed consent and maintaining confidentiality throughout the research process.

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

• Qualitative Analysis: Learning to interpret and analyze qualitative data, such as teachers' responses from focus groups and interviews. 
• Data Management: Gaining proficiency in organizing and managing data using spreadsheets and other tools.
• Research Techniques: Developing the ability to find, evaluate, and summarize source materials from libraries and online resources.
• Critical Thinking: Enhancing critical thinking by analyzing complex historical and political contexts related to the research topic.
• Ethical Research Practices: Understanding and applying ethical guidelines, including the importance of informed consent and maintaining confidentiality.
• Academic Writing and Editing: Improving writing skills through the process of proofreading, editing, and compiling bibliographies.
• Project Management: Learning to manage multiple research tasks, including literature reviews and reference checking.
• Collaboration: Building teamwork skills by working closely with other researchers and contributing to discussions.
• Communication Skills: Developing the ability to convey research findings clearly and effectively, both in writing and presentations.

Faculty Name: Darlene Brooks Hedstrom 

Faculty Email:  brookshedstrom@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies 

Faculty Department or Program: Classical and Early Mediterranean Studies & Near Eastern and Judaic Studies 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5, 4-6, 5-7 

Project Title: Digitizing Monasticism in Scotland: Building the Virtual Reality of Lindores Abbey 

This research assistant position will support Professor Brooks Hedstrom. 

Project Summary 
"Digitizing Monasticism in Scotland: Building the Virtual Reality of Lindores Abbey" is a collaborative initiative between Brandeis University and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Co-directed by Dr. Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, the project operates under the auspices of the Monastic Archaeology Field School (MAFS), where students excavate Lindores Abbey, a 12th–16th-century monastic site in Newburgh, Scotland. The current excavations at Lindores represent the first systematic investigation of this historically unexamined abbey. The project aims to document the architectural and archaeological history of Lindores Abbey, with a key outcome being the development of a Virtual Reality (VR) experience. This VR project will allow visitors to explore reconstructions of the abbey’s key spaces, alongside artifacts discovered on-site. By participating in this project, the student will help design spaces that are accessible to all visitors both in Scotland and those visiting through web platforms.This project will use two modes of investigation, document analysis and VR reconstruction, to explore what the monastery owned and the volume of artifacts, furniture, and monks that could be contained within Lindores Abbey. By visualizing the data, the project will bring together the humanities and social sciences to demonstrate the importance of mapping, photo-documentation, and VR to learn about past communities and how to convey history to modern visitors to the site.  

Position Description 

The Research Assistant for Digitizing Monasticism in Scotland: Building the Virtual Reality of Lindores Abbey will work on two aspects of the VR of Lindores. First, the student will read and annotate the chartulary (donations and bequeaths) of Lindores for a database to map the physical locations of the lands that Lindores possessed throughout its history. The mapping of the landholdings will be part of designing an ArcGIS StoryMap to visualize the abbey holdings from its founding to its dissolution in 1559. Second, the student will learn skills by using a handheld 3D scanner (Revopoint MIRACO), designing a room at the monastery using ArtSteps to design a virtual room, learning 3D scanning with Skanect, and locating 3D objects at existing collections such as the British Museum, the National Museum of Scotland, and the smaller museums at Melrose and Arbroath abbeys.  

Working with Prof. Brooks Hedstrom, the Research Assistant will contribute to designing a StoryMap of Lindores landholdings, which will be part of the public-facing work at the site of Lindores and hosted on the MAFS website and DigitScotland.com. The designing of the VR rooms at Lindores Abbey will allow the student to learn important skills in working with 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and designing VR spaces for placing objects in virtual spaces. As an unstudied abbey, the student will have a unique opportunity to learn digital skills while working on a unique project to recover a neglected monument and community in medieval Scotland.  

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

The Research Assistant will receive training, along with Prof. Brooks Hedstrom, at the Brandeis Digital Scholarship Lab as part of the larger project at Lindores. The Research Assistant can expect to gain skills in using ArcGIS, 3D scanning with Skanect/Structure Capture (https://structure.io/skanect [structure.io]), retrieving 3D objects from Thangs.com and building virtual rooms with Artsteps (https://www.artsteps.com [artsteps.com]). The Research Assistant will increase their skills in designing and building a database using medieval documents by using Recogito (https://recogito.pelagios.org/ [recogito.pelagios.org]), which is text annotation platform that interfaces with Pleiades (https://pleiades.stoa.org/home [pleiades.stoa.org]), an open-source mapping resource.  

Faculty Name: Chandler Rosenberger 

Faculty Email:  crosen@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Associate Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: International and Global Studies/Sociology 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 4-6 

Project Title: Hong Kong on Trial: The Prosecution of Political Candidates Under the 2021 National Security Law 

This research assistant position will support Professor Rosenberger.

Project Summary 
The question of Hong Kong’s right to manage its own affairs has always been critical to the city’s relations with the rest of China.  When the British gave control of Hong Kong back to the Chinese in 1997, both parties agreed that the city would govern itself for fifty years.  For nearly two decades, Hong Kong resisted any encroachment of Beijing’s on the city’s traditional freedoms. This changed with the ascension in 2012 of Xi Jinping as China’s leader. In 2014 Xi suppressed protests of China’s rewriting of Hong Kong’s electoral laws; in 2019, Beijing went even further, crushing protests of a new extradition agreement and implementing a draconian National Security Law in the city the following year.  When dozens of democracy activists organized a primary election to select candidates for the 2021 polls, Beijing arrested 47 of the most prominent and charged them with sedition.  The separate trials of the “Hong Kong 47” concluded in December 2023 and verdicts are only now trickling out.  Thirteen have been convicted and two acquitted. 

These trials are another tragic step in Hong Kong’s loss of its freedoms, but they also provide a wealth of data on the attitudes that have put Hong Kong and Beijing on a collision course.  In testimony and argument, the prosecution and defense have each described clear and consistent beliefs about Hong Kong that simply contradict one another at every point.  On the one hand, Beijing believes it has the right to charge candidates for office with “sedition” – that is, betraying China – because its leaders perceive a plot among the candidates to wrest Hong Kong from Chinese control.  The accused politicians, on the other hand, believe they were entirely within their rights to use their offices to restore some of the city’s traditional freedoms – freedoms they believed had been guaranteed by Xi’s predecessors. These two different perspectives are, of course, rooted in vastly different political cultures, with different ideas about the meaning of British colonization, Chinese oppression, revolution, and revival, and, of course, Hong Kong and Chinese identity.  Are the Hong Kongers Chinese who have been rescued from decades of Western control?  Or are they members of a society distinct from the mainland and in danger of losing its culture?  

Position Description 
I would like to hire a research assistant who is fluent in Cantonese, the Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong.  The assistant would help collect transcripts from the trial, video clips of interviews with prosecutors and defendants, as well opinion articles from the local press on both sides of the case.  As I have done with previous research assistants, I will compile lists of terms and ideas most common on both the prosecution and defense sides.  The research assistant and I will then trace the historical roots of these concepts in the two communities’ cultures.   

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

Research skills include: 

• Collection of relevant documents: how to form a coherent corpus of research materials, selecting only those most relevant and reliable. 
• Translation of political ideas: performing not simply a literal translation, but also identifying common terms and their most common English analogues. 
• Socio-cultural analysis: identifying patterns of thought recognizable by the use of distinct vocabulary and ideas.  Chinese nationalists, for example, often refer to Hong Kong protesters as “orphaned children,” suggesting that, having been separated from the larger Chinese family by British imperialism, the protesters do not recognize their true mother, China, when they are embraced by it.    
• Sociological relativism: in seeking to accurately reflect the beliefs of both sides, a research assistant will learn the importance being fair to subjects and their statements whether one believes in them or not.  

Faculty Name: Sabine von Mering 

Faculty Email:  vonmering@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literature 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5 

Project Title: What leads German right-wing extremists to reject the scientific consensus on climate change? 

This research assistant position will support Professor von Mering.

Project Summary 
My project aims to answer a simple question: Why does the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the right-wing extremist party that just won over 30% in two East German state elections on September 2, 2024, reject the scientific consensus on climate change? What are the connections between AfD voters and supporters of Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians in the US and in other countries who espouse similar anti-science views? How, more importantly, did so many young voters swing from supporting the Greens and climate champions to supporting the AfD? 

In this project I would like the student to begin by sighting the literature about the rise of the AfD and its stance on climate denial and begin to refine my own hypothesis about the connection. This Fall, Brandeis will be hosting Germany's most famous young climate activist, Luisa Neubauer, whose first book I translated and published with Brandeis University Press in 2023. It would be interesting for us to have in-depth conversations with Luisa about this project to develop our hypotheses in answering the main question and also follow the development of the protests in the US and Germany this fall.  

Position Description 
Although solid knowledge of German would be highly desirable for this position, it is not required, as there are plenty of documents to sight that are published in English. The student's first job would be to search for recent publications on the topic and provide an annotated bibliography that will help us come up with a strong hypothesis. Depending on the findings, and new information becoming available this fall we should be able to write an article together that answers the question.  

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 
searching for valid scholarly sources, skimming sources, sorting sources, creating an annotated bibliography of materials found, brainstorming ideas for hypotheses, developing good questions for Luisa and others, developing a useful system to keep all findings in an easily searchable online folder, drafting and eventually co-authoring a scholarly article. 

Faculty Name: Leonard Saxe 

Faculty Email:  saxe@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Social Policy at Brandeis University 

Faculty Department or Program: Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies 

Direct Research Mentor Name: Dr. Dalia Wassner 

Direct Research Mentor Email:  daliafw@brandeis.edu 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 5-7 

Project Title: Study of Latin American Jews living in the USA 

This research assistant position will support Professor Saxe.

Project Summary 

Our project will help us understand recent demographic shifts in Latin American Jewry and the effects of these later migrations, or second migrations, on enduring Latin American Jewish identities among the immigrant communities as well as on the home communities who see members of the constituents emigrate. Additionally, we aim to understand these Latin American Jewish immigrants and their subsequent identities as transnational actors, alongside their impact on US Jewry in terms of Jewish communal, religious, and cultural life. We propose to conduct the first study of its kind to understand contemporary centers of Latin American Jewish life in the USA within this transnational lens. We seek to understand how modes of identity and affiliation mirror or diverge from Latin American or US models in comparison. The study will also provide a heretofore lacking narrative mapping of the largest Latin American Jewish communities in the United States based on key informant interviews and secondary research. This qualitative and quantitative study in the field for up to 6 cities in the USA, involves developing, executing and analyzing focus groups and surveys. We will also build on the CMJS's existing leading studies of Jewish communities in the USA. 

Position Description 

The student will help map the existing literature in the field on Latin American Jews in the US and then help analyze the results of focus groups and surveys we are designing for this study. In these ways, the student will gain the experience of being involved in the different aspects of designing and conducting a research project. Professor Leonard Saxe will serve as the overseeing advisor on the study, helping guide the student through the field of qualitative and quantitative research, and helping tie in our study with previous studies conducted by the center. Associate Research Scientist Dr. Dalia Wassner will serve as the primary research mentor, providing the day-to-day guidance for a literature review of the field and then data analysis of our focus groups and surveys. We would also be working as a team at CMJS including Associate Research Scientist Dr. Raquel Magidin de Kramer. 

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

• Understand how to do a literature review of the field and position new research. 
• Design and implement target population surveys and focus groups. 
• Analyze quantitative and qualitative data. 
• Work collaboratively with a research team. 
• Present data for academic and community distribution. 

Faculty Name: Carole Carlson 

Faculty Email:  ccarlson@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Professor of the Practice 

Faculty Department or Program: Heller School 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5, 4-6 

Project Title: Research and case writing for forthcoming Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation textbook 

This research assistant position will support Professor Carlson. 

Project Summary 
This project involves conducting research and drafting material for a forthcoming book, Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Second Edition).  The research assistant will have the opportunity to conduct hands on research on multiple entrepreneurial ventures around the globe to support writing short cases and entrepreneur profiles, as well as research best practices and current trends in several areas relevant to entrepreneurship (for example, financing options.)  The research assistant will also have the opportunity to work closely with two advanced graduate students to write cases on innovative entrepreneurial ventures. 

Position Description 
The research assistant will perform background research, interview entrepreneurs and update portions of a manuscript.  Potential case studies span the global tourism industry, the hospitality industry in Vietnam and community-based venture development in Uganda among others. Because the textbook is geared to the undergraduate market it is also an opportunity to contribute to learning material for fellow students worldwide.  

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 
The assistant will learn to perform web-based research, identify, read and extract information from journal articles and turn interview data into compelling story lines for cases.   This skill building project will be particularly appealing to students who have an interest in hands-on research in the areas of entrepreneurship, social and financial inclusion and global issues as these are core to the research. 

Faculty Name: Claudia Horn 

Faculty Email:  claudiahorn@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Madeleine Haas Russell Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate Crisis, Risks, and Responses 

Faculty Department or Program: Environmental Studies and Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5, 4-6, 5-7 

Project Title: Using Rosa Luxemburg’s Herbarium from the Early 20th Century for Phenology Research on Climate Change Impacts on Plant Species 

This research assistant position will support Professor Horn. 

Project Summary 

Between 1913 and 1918, one of the most iconic European progressive figures, Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), compiled and annotated pressed leaves and flower blossoms, including while imprisoned for political dissidence. While Luxemburg’s political economy has inspired critiques of the contradictions and crises within our economic system, this interdisciplinary project sheds light on her ecological contribution to groundbreaking phenology research on the impacts of climate change on plant species.  

Change is already affecting our ecosystems, changing habitats through floods, droughts, and extreme weather events that put species and plant life at risk. Plant phenology research, which investigates the phases and events in plants’ life, such as leaf-out, flowering, and fruit set of plant species, increasingly interrogates how rising temperatures alter these processes, seeking to assess resilience to climate change and patterns of species loss. Thousands of herbarium specimens have been digitized as historical data on plant varieties from diverse regions and times. Although not all contain standardized data on phenological characteristics, herbarium specimens offer a more comprehensive geographical assessment of phenological shifts than traditional long-term observation alone.  

This project will identify the phenological characteristics of Luxemburg’s digitized specimen for comparison with current observation and available remote sensing data, particularly on leaf out time in the spring. Luxemburg’s collection and observations from her letter allow for an interdisciplinary investigation into plant life during her time and now. This project fosters research collaboration among interdisciplinary scholars and students from the University of Warsaw, Poland, Germany, the US, and beyond to digitize the specimen fully, determine the phenological use of the material, and determine the available technologies, next steps, and possibilities for comparison with contemporary databases and observations. 

Position Description 

The student will contribute to different stages and components of the project, particularly the preparation of the specimens for analysis, data collection, data management, and analysis. The specific tasks are as follows:  

Specimen Preparation: 

Catalog each of the 377 specimens with a unique identifier. Digital images of the specimen and a list of the corrected Latin names. 

Gather existing metadata associated with the specimens, including collection dates, locations, annotations 

Assess the physical condition of the specimens to determine their suitability for phenological analysis (e.g., any damage, image quality, the presence of flowers, fruits, or leaves). 

Data Collection and management: 

Record phenological data, such as flowering stage, fruiting stage, or leafing stage, using a standardized scoring system to ensure consistency. 

Research historical climate data (temperature, precipitation) for the collection sites corresponding to the collection dates.  

Research available phenological datasets for the locations 

Georeference the collection locations to associate specimens with specific climatic regions. 

Create a database to store all phenological, environmental, and specimen metadata. 

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

• Research design, operationalization, and collaboration 

• Data collection 
• Phenology and botany research methods (scoring systems) 
• Literature review, analysis, and management (via Zotero and Endnote) 
• GIS-based creation of interactive maps 
• Research with online databases 
• Data collection and management 
• Time management 

Faculty Name: Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso 

Faculty Email:  olaj@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Associate Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: African and African American Studies 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5, 4-6, 5-7 

Project Title: African Migration Studies 

This research assistant position will support Professor Yacob-Haliso.  

Project Summary 

This project in the interdisciplinary field of African migration has two major parts. The first is an ongoing African Migration project, and the second is the development of an online website and database of resources at the end of the book part of the project.The primary aim of the African Migration project is to re-center Africa in the extensive body of ideas, philosophies, data, narratives, and analyses of African and global migrations; curate, update and critique mainstream narratives; mapping changes within, and charting future directions for interdisciplinary studies of migration. At the project end point, we plan to create a website on African migration that brings together different types, formats and sources of information, institutions, and networks working on the themes of this project as a way of translating the academic contributions of the book to a wider audience. 

Position Description 

The undergraduate research assistant will assist with most of the following: 

• Search and compile literature from a wide range of sources for editors’ writing of the Handbook Introduction, based on themes already established in the Handbook concept note
• Search and compile literature from a wide range of sources useful for writing my own specific Handbook chapter, “Feminist Perspectives on Migration in Africa”
• Source for statistics, maps, images, etc. on various aspects of African migration
• Compile a comprehensive list of different kinds of sources of information on African migration towards building a future website on African migration
• Doing research to identify experts in specific fields as potential contributors or peer reviewers for the Handbook
• Drafting and/or sending group emails to members of the research team
• Possibly read and fact-check any chapter of the Handbook that the student may be interested in personally
• Possibly check sources, citations and references for correctness

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

The student research assistant will learn most or all of the following: 

• A critique of mainstream disciplinary research processes and methodologies, and of their fit or lack thereof for studies of subaltern people and parts of the world, in this case, Africa 
• Practical applications of inclusive, critical, and decolonial research methodologies to the research and publications process
• How and where to find information and literature on African issues generally and migration studies specifically, including how to more efficiently use the Brandeis Library’s resources
• How to evaluate sources and evidence for validity, reliability and relevance
• The basic ingredients for translating a major book project into a publicly available database of resources via the planned website
• Correct citational practices
• Communication with professional colleagues
• First-hand view of academic project management and how it differs from or is similar to other industries
• Direct experience of the academic publication process, in this case, the production processes for a tertiary publication, which is a rare experience for many researchers
• Ethical principles relating to how all these tasks are executed in the academy broadly, and in African and Black Studies more directly
• Grow their knowledge of the complex dynamics of African migration, possibly a field that they have not had much prior exposure to

Faculty Name: Siri Suh 

Faculty Email:  jssuh@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Associate Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: Sociology 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 5-7 

Project Title: Into Women's Hands: Misoprostol and Maternal Mortality Reduction in Burkina Faso and Senegal 

This research assistant position will support Professor Suh. 

Project Summary 
First introduced to the global market as a treatment for gastric ulcers in the mid-1980s, misoprostol was repurposed a decade later into a safe abortion medication by women in the global South. In addition to terminating pregnancy during the first and second trimesters, misoprostol can be used to induce labor, prevent and treat postpartum hemorrhage, and treat complications of miscarriage.  Misoprostol can be administered by non-physicians, or by women themselves.  It does not require a cold chain, and is relatively affordable in small quantities.  Global health experts have hailed misoprostol as a potential game-changer in reducing the persistent problem of maternal mortality in the global South.  Misoprostol holds particular promise for reducing maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, where most global maternal death (70%) occurs, where up to 25% of maternal death is related to hemorrhage, and where the risk of death from unsafe abortion is the highest in the world.  Although the World Health Organization has classified misoprostol as an essential obstetric medication, it remains controversial because it disrupts physicians’ authority over obstetric care, and facilitates self-administered abortion outside of formal health systems.   

“Into Women’s Hands” is a research collaboration between faculty and students at Brandeis University, Université Cheikh Anta Diop (Senegal), and Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso).  We conduct ethnographic research on the use, availability, circulation, and quantification of misoprostol within and beyond medical spaces in two Francophone African countries with restrictive abortion laws.  Our project explores how misoprostol ends up in the hands of some consumers, patients, and health workers, and health facilities, and not others.  Ultimately, we aim to investigate how a pill that promises to reduce maternal mortality by placing obstetric care directly “into women’s hands” simultaneously opens and forecloses possibilities for achieving reproductive justice in Burkina Faso and Senegal.   

Our research methods include in-depth interviews, direct observation at health facilities and pharmacies, and mystery client studies in open-air markets and brick-and-mortar pharmacies, and with virtual pharmaceutical vendors.   A description of our research questions and methodology, and biographies of all team members, can be found on our project website, www.intowomenshands.org. “Into Women’s Hands” is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. 

Position Description 

The undergraduate research assistant (URA) will work closely with Professor Suh in the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University by accomplishing the following tasks:  

• Update and maintain bibliographic sources in the project library on Zotero.   
• Conduct relevant reviews of academic literature and policy texts and update the project library on Box as necessary.   
• Ensure coherence between sources on Zotero and Box. 
• Organize and maintain project files on Box.   
• Translate excerpts of data (interview transcripts, field notes) from French to English using DeepL software. 
• Work with Professor Suh to update and maintain master list of Nvivo codes. 
• Work with Professor Suh to analyze and synthesize project data for display on the project website, and for publication in journal articles and policy briefs.   
• Maintain the project website by uploading photos, data, publications, and other material as they become available.   

The undergraduate research assistant (URA) will gain important experience working in a transnational, multi-institutional, bilingual (English and French), and interdisciplinary team.  They will become familiar with literature on maternal and reproductive health from multiple fields, including global/public health, medical anthropology, medical sociology, demography, gender studies, and African studies.  The URA will gain experience in analyzing data from multiple sources, including interview transcripts, field notes,  and health care statistics from pharmacies and health facilities.   They will also learn how to synthesize data for display on the project website and for publication in academic journals and policy briefs. The URA will contribute to the management of a qualitative research project by maintaining administrative and research documents.   They will also learn how to observe protocols for research ethics through the protection of virtual data. 

Faculty Name: Anna Scherbina 

Faculty Email:  ascherbina@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: International Business School 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 4-6, 5-7 

Project Title: Differential personal outcomes between male and female asset managers 

This research assistant position will support Professor Scherbina. 

Project Summary 
Significantly fewer women than men are working in the highly lucrative asset management industry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the discrepancy in personal outcomes for men and women working in this industry. Having obtained a comprehensive historical dataset of male and female mutual fund managers, in my other research I find that women tend to leave this industry relatively early in their careers, before their retirement age, and this is not true for male managers.  Differences in performance do not explain female exits from the industry.  

In this project, I would like to investigate whether women may choose other lines of work in search of a better work-life balance, which would allow them to have families. Preliminary analysis I have conducted for this project shows that female mutual fund managers are significantly less likely to be married and have children than male mutual fund managers, even after controlling for the tendency of better educated women to have fewer children. Therefore, barriers to having a family may serve as a deterrent to some women. For this project, I would like to collect additional data in order to investigate whether women tend to have children following their exit from the industry, differentiating between voluntary or involuntary exits. I will also plan to quantify the impact of the selection effect on the gender imbalance in asset management industry. 

Position Description 
The research assistant's main responsibility will be to collect data on mutual fund managers from LexisNexis, LinkedIn, and other online sources, manage and clean the data, read it into statistical software, and run some light statistical analysis of the data.  The research assistant will also collect academic papers and summarize them in literature review.   

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 
The research assistant will learn the following skills: 

1. Collecting, cleaning and managing data.  
2. Will become comfortable with commonly used research databases, such as LexisNexis and Morningstar.
3. Will learn to do data analysis using common software used in economics and finance research, such as Python, R or Stata.  
4. Will learn how to do the literature review.
5. Will learn about the relevant finance and economics literature but doing literature review for the paper.  
6. Will learn about the process of writing a research paper. 

Faculty Name: Jingyi Huang 

Faculty Email:  jingyih@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Assistant Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: Economics 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 5-7 

Number of Positions: 2 

Project Title: Text as Data: Use Historical Document to Measure Policy-Directed Technology Adoption 

This research assistant position will support Professor Huang. 

Project Summary 
A core economic question is to understand how government policies shape the direction of technological progress. This project examines how innovation responds to industry policies by analyzing the gradual implementation of food safety and cold storage regulations. In the early 20th century, mechanical refrigeration became widely employed in food manufacturing. While it transformed food production and distribution, the primitive technology also resulted in a significant increase in foodborne illnesses. In response to public outcry, various state governments began regulating the cold storage industry.  

We will utilize historical documents to measure the emergence and adoption of new refrigeration technology. The project consists of three main components. Firstly, we will use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract text from scanned firm-level documents, which contain detailed information on location, capacity, and specific machine models used by each cold storage firm. Given the scale of the data, we will employ AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Azure, etc.) for the OCR. Secondly, to document the development of refrigeration-related technology, we will use Natural Language Processing (NLP) models construct text similarity measures between patents and regulatory or firm-production descriptions. This will enable us to identify patents that may be applicable to the cold storage industry. Finally, by combining this information with data on regulatory changes, we can assess how different regulations created varying incentives for firms to innovate through changes in machinery and patenting behavior.  

This interdisciplinary project allows students interested in computer science, economics, or history to apply their subject-specific knowledge to study a new topic. Students will learn about managing large-scale data collection, visualization, and analysis in a collaborative setting. Students should have basic knowledge of Python. Prior experience with API will be helpful. 

Position Description 

The research assistant will play a central role in constructing the dataset. Tasks include: 

1. Extract information from unstructured texts 
2. Clean and standardize text and convert it to computable data
3. Create descriptive statistics and network figures to present the results

Skills the Research Assistant can learn

1.Coding: Developing and managing code to facilitate large-scale data extraction, ensuring efficiency and accuracy in data handling.  

2.Project Management: Breaking down large projects into manageable tasks and structuring workflows to optimize complex processes. 

3.Communication and Collaboration: Articulating progress and challenges while coordinating with team members, fostering teamwork and effective communication in research settings 

Faculty Name: Benjamin Gomes-Casseres 

Faculty Email:  bgc@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Peter A Petri Professor of Business and Society 

Faculty Department or Program: Business 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5, 4-6, 5-7 

Project Title: Student Engagement in Online Classes 

This research assistant position will support Professor Gomes-Casseres. 

Project Summary 
The research will involve analyzing, presenting, and interpreting data that we have already collected on 20 online business courses in 2020-2024. These courses were beta tests for the Brandeis Online Class Analytics project (BOCA – see http://go.brandeis.edu/boll). This project has built unique methods and software to capture the speech patterns of participants in a Zoom meeting. 

Topics to be explored may include: 

•  Who participates, how much, in online classes?
•  How inclusive and balanced is the discussion in online classes?
•  How does participation affect learning and student performance?
•  What materials are most conducive to interactive classes?
•  How do students perceive the patterns in the data?

The research will involve mostly statistical analysis and modeling, as well as application of social-science methods and concepts. The data are private and sensitive, and researchers will be asked to agree to a standard confidentiality agreement as used with all our researchers.The work is to be done remotely, using servers that we control, with all data remaining on these secure servers. 

Position Description 

Depending on the skills of the RA, the work may involve varying amount of statistical analysis and modeling. Accuracy, confidentiality, and diligence are key requirements for success in this job. The specific output will depend on the skills and research assignment, which will be determined in collaboration with candidates. Programing skills are helpful but not required. Familiarity with Python, Excel, and similar languages is helpful. 

Skills the student will learn 

The student will learn valuable skills such as data management, statistical analysis, data visualization, and pedagogical methods.

Faculty Name: Muna Guvenc Ospina Leon 

Faculty Email:  guvenc@brandeis.edu 

Faculty Position Title: Assistant Professor 

Faculty Department or Program: Fine Arts 

Hourly commitment (range in hours/week): 3-5, 4-6, 5-7 

Project Title: Architectures of Memorial Justice: Visual Representations of Violence and Grief at Post-Atrocity Sites 

This research assistant position will support Professor Guvenc Ospina Leon 

Project Summary 

Post-atrocity site memorials  provide architectural historians with a fragmented and incomplete way since they come to existence as a result of a highly selected process. How does the study of memorials in post-atrocity sites representing collective suffering and solidarity enrich architectural history? How are sites of atrocities transformed into places of commemoration ? How do they cultivate solidarity among members of marginalized communities as well as being a dynamic of reconciliation? This research address these questions by comparing two recently opened post-atrocity memorials in very different urban geographies. The National Memorial for Justice and Peace in Montgomery, Alabama,and the Yazidi Genocide Memorial in Sinjar. Based on site-visits, we argue that both of these memorials aim to serve three purposes. First, they serve to generate counter-narratives reflecting the experiences of marginalized minorities and cultivate a sense of solidarity among these groups who experienced tragic losses. They also strive to fill the voids by documenting the scope of violence and identifying graves and victims in the absence of official archives. Finally, they also aim to pursue symbolic justice by giving new meaning to the quotidian practices and urban spaces and generating new forms of civic engagement.By doing so, they claim to be living memorials. We question to what extent these sites are actually  living memorials in terms of accessibility, and being embedded in urban everyday life. We develop critical perspectives regarding their potential in transforming public space and enabling inter-communal reconciliation.  

Position Description 

Undergraduate student will assist with:  

• Compile a comprehensive literature review on memorial architecture, post-atrocity sites, and memorial justice.
• Gather detailed information and visual material on the Memorials
• Organize and manage data, including articles, images, notes, and any other relevant materials, using reference management software (e.g., Zotero)
• Assist with drafting sections of the literature review
• Help prepare for  conferences and workshops

Skills the Research Assistant can learn 

The undergraduate research assistant working on this project will gain a wealth of valuable skills and experiences that will benefit their academic and professional development for the future. 

1. Research Skills:

• Literature Review: The assistant will learn how to conduct comprehensive literature reviews, including identifying key sources, summarizing academic articles, and synthesizing information from various disciplines.

2. Analytical Thinking:

• Comparative Analysis: Through the comparison of different memorial sites, the assistant will gain experience in analyzing and contrasting architectural and urban interventions, helping them develop critical thinking skills.

3. Academic Writing:

• Writing Practice: By assisting with drafting sections of the paper or literature review, the assistant will refine their academic writing skills, learning how to construct clear, well-argued, and well-supported narratives.
• Citation and Referencing: They’ll become proficient in using reference management software and ensuring that all sources are correctly cited, a vital skill for any academic work.

5. Technical Skills:

• Digital Tools: The assistant will become familiar with various research tools and software, such as Zotero for reference management.

6. Interdisciplinary Insight:

• Interdisciplinary Research: Engaging with topics that span architecture, history, urban studies, and sociology will provide the assistant with a broader understanding of how different disciplines can intersect and inform one another.

7. Ethical Considerations:

• Research Ethics: Working on topics related to memorials and post-atrocity sites will expose the assistant to the ethical dimensions of researching sensitive subjects, including issues of representation, memory, and justice.