Research Junior Fellows

The conduct of research and the profession of political science are somewhat of a mystery, even to advanced and highly-qualified undergraduate students, regardless of their participation in the Honors Program or the University Scholar Programs. The Research Junior Fellows Program rectifies this neglected area by providing meaningful research experience, insight into the profession of Political Science, and the ability to work closely with a faculty member or an advanced (ABD) graduate student. The program is designed for sophomores, juniors, and seniors wishing to gain the experience that will prepare them to succeed in their senior thesis work and stand out as they apply for jobs and advanced degrees.  Research Junior Fellows will have a hands-on experience with the innovative research performed at the Department of Political Science and gain valuable professional insight by working closely with their supervisor on a weekly-basis, attending a seminar series exploring the diversity of methods and approaches, and participating in a capstone research presentation workshop.

Program Application and Deadlines:

To be considered for selection as a JF, students must first fill out the online application. The deadline for Spring terms is November 10; the deadline for Fall terms is April 30. 

Prospective Junior Fellows should be aware that the course prefix they are assigned (i.e. CPO, INR, etc.) will depend on their research project and faculty/PhD student mentor. Working as a Fellow for a professor in INR will mean you will enroll in INR 4911, for example.

Students who have any questions about this program should contact Dr. Daniel Smith,  Professor, via email or during office hours.

Matching Junior Research Fellows with Faculty

The Junior Research Fellows program is highly competitive. The Program Director will assign Research Fellows according to Faculty nominations and the needs of the projects, but not all projects or Research Fellows are guaranteed to be matched unless nominated directly by a faculty member. Faculty are encouraged to identify and recruit prospective Research Fellows from their own classroom experiences, or voice their interest in working with a Research Fellow from the open pool of applicants. Research Fellow applicants from the open pool will be chosen and assigned based on merit and fit with the research projects available that semester. Prospective Research Fellows should apply to the program directly by following the guidance contained in the program documents.

Faculty Research Projects Available

Professor Sharon Austin is completing two projects. First, she is working on a manuscript entitled, Say It To My Face: Black Women, Social Justice, and the Presidency. She will need assistance in finding articles and other information about the Black women who have either run for president or vice-president. She will also need information identifying Black women who have served in presidential cabinets, been nominated for various positions by American presidents, and information about Michelle Obama’s activism while serving as first lady. Second, she is completing a second edition to her Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness, and Political Participation in America book.

Professor Sebastian Elischer is seeking a Junior Fellow(s) to work on his current research project, Francophone Africa Post-Coup Dynamics . Dr. Elischer is currently authoring a book on the recent surge of coups in Francophone Africa. The junior research fellow will support this project through a combination of data analysis and qualitative research. Key responsibilities include: Conduct descriptive data collection and analysis using Afrobarometer, ACLED, and open-source economic datasets; Investigate political developments and institutional dynamics in any of the six focal countries; Assist in synthesizing findings into memos, timelines, and annotated bibliographies to support manuscript development; Maintain organized records of sources and data workflows for reproducibility and citation. Qualified applicants should possess: Foundational knowledge of political science or African studies, with interest in democratization, military intervention, or governance; Familiarity with basic data analysis tools (Excel, Stata); Ability to conduct open-source research and critically assess political events; Strong writing and organizational skills; French reading proficiency is a plus but NOT required.

Professor Andrew Janusz is conducting research on elections and inequality in Brazil. He is seeking students interested in gender and racial politics. Students will learn how to collect and analyze observational data. Students with data skills(R/Stata) and Portuguese speakers are especially encouraged to apply. Previous Junior Fellows have coauthored papers and articles with Dr. Janusz.

Professor Nicholas Kerr is working on a project titled, Post-Election Court Challenges and Democracy in Africa. Across Africa’s multiparty regimes, losing parties and candidates have increasingly relied on the courts to settle post-electoral disputes instead of resorting to post-election violence. Using the case of Nigeria, this project seeks to theorize and study (1) the factors that motivate candidates to mount post-election challenges and, (2) the consequences of judicial intervention into elections on the quality of elections and democratization in Africa. The first stage of the project seeks to develop an original database of the petitions filed with the Election Tribunal and the Courts of Appeal across sub-national elections (Governor, House of Representatives, Senate, and State House of Assembly) during Nigeria’s 2015, 2019 and 2023 elections cycles. Students will analyze official documents from the Nigeria Court of Appeals on petitions filed at the Electoral Tribunals and appeals filed at the Nigeria Court of Appeals to manually code 15 indicators associated with the petitions and appeals. The resulting data will be used to:  Catalogue petition judgements associated with each petition and appeal; Link the petition database with an existing candidate database to explore the factors that motivate losing candidates to file electoral petitions; Link the petition database with public opinion data to explore how sub-national regions with high number of petitions (or petitions that have been successful) influence perceptions of election quality, trust in the courts, and support for democracy. It would be great if the junior fellow had some basic statistical analyses training (R or Stata) but this training is not mandatory.

Professor Amie Kreppel is working on a number of different EU related projects which involve both detailed data collection and analysis and more qualitative work compiling materials from a variety of academic and archival (online) sources. Project 1 involves compiling and coding a dataset related to the questions of Members of the European Parliament during the Monetary Dialogues with the European Central Bank. Project 2 is focused on the evolution of oversight and accountability measures in the European Union and requires compiling articles and collecting data from text-based resources. Finally, Project 3 includes initial stages of gathering information on recent research related to the role (influence) of Rapporteurs in the legislative process within the European parliament and on final policy outcomes.

Professor Bryon Moraski is working on countering Russia’s influence in Europe. Preference will be given to students who have performed well in Professor Moraski’s courses, “Russian Foreign Policy” or “Politics in Russia.” Familiarity with Excel as well as STATA or R is a plus. More information about the project is available here.

Professor Andrew Rosenberg is looking for one or more Junior Fellows to help with a new research project. The project examines how International Monetary Fund country reports describe and evaluate different states, and whether similar economic problems are framed differently across countries. Junior Fellows will help read short excerpts from IMF reports and code the language used in them, including references to policy responsibility, institutional capacity, peer comparison, and reform guidance. They may also help identify useful examples, keep track of uncertain coding decisions, and organize source material for later analysis. This position is a good fit for students interested in international relations, political economy, global inequality, development, or text-based research. No prior experience with the IMF or text analysis is required, but applicants should be careful readers, well-organized, and comfortable working with spreadsheets. Strong writing skills and attention to detail are especially important.

Professor Beth Rosenson is recruiting a Junior Fellow for the following project: As part of a broader project on unethical behavior by members of Congress, I am conducting research  on the issue of sexual harassment in Congress. I am interested in identifying how members have dealt with the issue, in particular whether there are partisan and gender differences in members’ concern about this issue. A junior fellow is needed to assist with creating a data set from the Congressional Record. The goal is to identify members of the House of Representatives who spoke out against sexual harassment, both with regard to cases involving fellow members and in reference to the issue of sexual harassment in general. The Junior Fellow will assist with creating this dataset for the years 1983-2023.

Professor David Siroky is recruiting JFs for his project, ‘War Beyond Firepower: Rethinking Power in Asymmetric Conflict.’ He is exploring why weaker insurgents so often endure—and sometimes prevail—against far stronger state militaries. The project argues that the true foundations of power in irregular war lie not in weapons or wealth, but in invisible institutions: informal, honor-based norms of revenge, hospitality, and silence that govern behavior in communities where the state’s reach is limited. These norms create powerful systems of local governance that determine who fights, who cooperates, and who resists. Through a mix of comparative case studies (e.g., Chechnya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Mali), statistical and computational modeling, the book aims to assess a general theory of how invisible institutions shape war and peace. As a Research Assistant, you will help bring this ambitious project to life by working directly with a multidisciplinary research team. Tasks may include collecting and coding conflict data, conducting text analysis, helping develop and train machine learning models to detect normative language in conflict reports, and synthesizing insights from political science, anthropology, economics and sociology. You’ll gain hands-on experience in mixed-methods research design, data management, and theory-building, while deepening your understanding of how culture, legitimacy, and informal governance shape global security. This is an opportunity to contribute to a project that reimagines what power means in modern warfare—and to learn cutting-edge tools for studying the invisible forces that sustain or subvert states engaged in asymmetric conflicts.

Professor Ben Smith has several ongoing research projects. Please contact him for more information.

Professor Daniel Smith is conducting research on voting and elections in the American states, particularly how election laws affect political participation and turnout. He is seeking students interested in learning how to collect data on state election codes, make public records requests for data, analyze observational data, and designing surveys.  Students with Qualtrics, language (especially Spanish and Haitian Creole), big data (R/Python/SQL), and GIS (QGIS or ArcGIS) skills are especially encouraged to apply.  Previous Junior Fellows have coauthored papers/articles/book chapters with Dr. Smith.

Professor Jake Truscott is currently engaged with research projects that apply natural language processing and related computational methods to the study of American legal institutions and judicial behavior. A primary focus of this work is the development of a large-scale, text-based measure of judicial ideology with the aim of mapping jurists from both state and federal courts into a single, comparable ideological space. To support this effort, he is recruiting Junior Fellows to assist with data collection and corpus construction. Fellows will play a central role in identifying, recovering, and organizing judicial opinions authored by courts across the United States since the 1990s. In addition to data collection, Junior Fellows will have opportunities (depending on interest) to develop skills in data and text preprocessing, as well as computational analysis using programming languages such as R and Python. These experiences are particularly well-suited for students interested in computational social science, law and courts, or applied data analysis.

Professor Matthew Uttermark, co-leader of the Public Administration Identity Lab, examines how identity, institutions and structural forces shape the experiences and career trajectories of public service professionals. The lab supports several undergraduate projects, including a qualitative PRISMA‑guided literature review that maps how scholars discuss identity within public service careers and identifies gaps in how these conversations have evolved over time. Additional student projects investigate how individuals are socialized into public service through public affairs education and whether opportunities to cultivate public service motivation (PSM) are distributed equally across different communities. Together, these efforts aim to build a clearer understanding of how identity influences access, expectations and professional development within the public sector.

Professor Ryan Welch is seeking Junior Fellows to join his research project, Embedding Accountability: Why Governments Create Effective Human Rights Institutions. The project examines a central puzzle in political science: if governments typically seek to preserve their own power, why do they sometimes create institutions that can hold them accountable to international norms? And when they do, do these institutions actually improve human rights outcomes? Junior Fellows will contribute primarily by collecting, organizing, and analyzing legal documents that establish and empower national human rights institutions (NHRIs). Fellows may also contribute to literature reviews and quantitative data analysis, depending on interest and experience. This position is well-suited for students interested in human rights, international politics, or empirical research methods. Qualified applicants should possess the following: familiarity with Excel, strong organizational skills, clear written and oral communication, high self-motivation, and close attention to detail. Familiarity with R and/or Stata is a plus but not required.