Research Opportunities
Undergraduates can take advantage of opportunities to participate in the latest research happening in the world of political science. Gov92r allows you to conduct research in the Government department for academic credit. It is graded SAT/UNSAT. If you are interested in any of these projects, please contact the supervisors directly. You will need to submit the Gov 92r form (available here) to Karen Kaletka before you can register for the course on my.harvard.
Spring 2026
Prof. Jennifer Hochschild
Politics of Social Uses of Genomic Science in Three Countries
My project examines political and policy choices regarding genetic and genomic technologies in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. The central goal is to analyze how and why specified technological developments are associated with – both transforming and being transformed by – a country’s practices, values, and institutions. I will examine, for example, 1) the role of the shadow of eugenics and surveillance in Germany’s bitter debates and cautious legislation regarding genetic ancestry testing and DNA phenotyping, 2) the role of the “civil religion” of the National Health Service in Britain’s unusually strong focus on equity issues in making choices about genomic testing and treatment, and 3) the role of religious commitments and organizations in Americans’ relatively acrimonious debates over abortion, IVF, and PGD.
Prerequisites (courses and/or methodological skills): some knowledge of genomic science and its societal uses or technological development would be ideal. Knowledge of 1) public opinion databases, 2) how to access government documents, including outside the US; 3) German; and/or 4) more generally, use of databases to find media publications, scholarly articles, and other sources would be great.
Contact: If you’re interested, send a CV and a short paragraph on why this project interests you to: hochschild@gov.harvard.edu
Prof. Mashail Malik
The Gender Dimension of Immigrant Incorporation
This project examines whether and how gendered experiences shape the social and political incorporation of foreign-born immigrants in the United States.
Prerequisites (courses and/or methodological skills): Familiarity with conducting in-depth literature reviews
Contact: If you’re interested, send a CV and a short paragraph on why this project interests you to: mashailmalik@fas.harvard.edu
Prof. Christoph Mikulaschek
United Nations: How does it work and what is its impact?
I am looking for an RA to support my ongoing research on the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Specifically, I work on a book that examines UN decision-making, compliance with its resolutions, and its effect on media coverage and public opinion in the U.S. and other countries. The RA would be asked to conduct independent research under my supervision on these topics. Potential tasks would include gathering and analyzing news media coverage data from online databases, evaluating and summarizing archival evidence that I have compiled, surveying and summarizing scholarly literatures, and conducting original research to update my data set on UN missions in conflict theaters. The specific tasks will depend on your qualifications.
Prerequisites (courses and/or methodological skills): Interest in international relations and in learning how to conduct social science research is a prerequisite. Text analysis skills and familiarity with the statistical software program R are a plus, but not required. German and/or Turkish language skills would also be a plus. Please mention any of these skills as well as related coursework and/or extracurriculars in your application email.
Contact: If you’re interested, send a CV and a short paragraph on why this project interests you to: mikulaschek@gov.harvard.edu
Dr. Julie Anne Weaver
Democratic Erosion Event Dataset
The Democratic Erosion Consortium is a partnership of researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners committed to marshaling evidence and learning to address the growing crisis of democratic erosion worldwide. We produce an original dataset—the Democratic Erosion Event Dataset (DEED)—that records discrete events related to democratic erosion and resistance to it around the world from 2000 onward.
We are looking for motivated students with quantitative skills to contribute to data analysis on the recently launched new version of DEED. The new version is a major update that significantly increases the total number of observations (~23,000) and evens out coverage across countries and time. Key tasks that students could participate in include conducting analyses with the new dataset, including producing graphs and short write-ups; identifying and implementing data improvements; and/or producing new visualizations for our website.
You can learn more about the Democratic Erosion Consortium here (https://democratic-erosion.org) and about our dataset here (https://democratic-erosion.org/dataset/)
Prerequisites (courses and/or methodological skills): Must be able to use R for one or more of the key areas of work (i.e. analyses, diagnostics, and/or visualizations).
Contact: If you’re interested, send a CV and a short paragraph on why this project interests you and your prior experience working with data in R: julieanneweaver@fas.harvard.edu