Faculty Research Assistantship Program (92R)

Project Head: Dr. Loren Beard

Project Title: Analyzing Service Receipt among Foster Youth Using National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) Data

This project examines how youth in foster care access federally funded services designed to support their transition to adulthood. The analysis draws on data from the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD), a national reporting system created under the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. Using data from multiple states and years, the project investigates how demographic and geographic factors – such as sex, race and ethnicity, disability status, and urbanicity – shape the receipt of services among youth ages 18-21. The goal is to identify patterns of inequality in service delivery and to understand how state and local contexts influence support for young people aging out of foster care. This research contributes to broader conversations about equity, public policy, and the design of safety-net programs for youth in transition.

Student Responsibilities:

• Clean, merge, and analyze NYTD and related administrative datasets using R

• Conduct descriptive analyses (e.g., cross-tabulations, data visualization)

• Prepare summary tables and figures for inclusion in manuscripts and presentations

• Participate in brief research meetings to discuss results and interpretation

Required Skills/Background:

• Prior coursework in quantitative research methods or statistics

• Proficiency in R for data cleaning and analysis 

• Strong attention to detail and ability to document analytical steps clearly

• Interest in topics related to social policy, child welfare, inequality, and/or youth well-being

Directions for Applying:

Interested students should email a brief statement (~1 paragraph) describing their relevant coursework, R experience, and research interests to Loren Beard at lorenbeard@g.harvard.edu, CC'ng Dr. Emily Fairchild at efairchild@fas.harvard.edu. Please include a CV and, if available, an example of prior data work.

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Project Head: Jason Beckfield

Project Title: Climate Sociology Lab: Participatory Action Research 
The Climate Sociology Lab invites collaborative and community-minded students to work with us on Participatory Action Research. PAR is an engaged style of research that builds on relationships between academic and non-academic organizations to develop new knowledge through action with and for communities confronting resource inequities and power imbalances. In the Climate Sociology Lab, we work with community-based organizations like the Lowlander Center to develop new research questions and generate new answers by privileging indigenous and other experiential and localized ways of knowing about pressing problems of environmental and climate injustices.

Skills and Tasks:
Tasks include relational work to cultivate existing research relationships and establish new ones; learning principles of indigenous and participatory research methods; analyzing and synthesizing current peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed research on environmental and climate justice; gathering primary and secondary data from interviews, observations, and archives; investigating economic opportunities for overburdened communities, often in the form of grants; contributing to grant-writing; documenting the successes of environmental justice organizations; estimating and interpreting quantitative models; and using and evaluating AI-based research tools.

Requirements:
Collaboratively develop a work plan with specific deliverables for the semester. Attend meetings of and occasionally present work to the Climate Sociology Lab, which meets on alternating Wednesday mornings at 9:45.

Directions for Applying:
Please send an application to jwb@g.harvard.edu, cc’ing jbeckfie@gmail.com and efairchild@fas.harvard.edu, including (1) your name, email address and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.

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Project Head: Dr. Christina Ciocca Eller

Project Title: Charting Heterogeneous Postsecondary Pathways
This project focuses on understanding young people’s diverse higher education trajectories over time, emphasizing those who have completed some college, but who have not attained a bachelor’s degree. The purpose of the project is to provide an in-depth understanding of the demographic distribution of the complex, heterogeneous higher education pathways people take, and to report the findings in the form of a short research article.

Student Responsibilities:

• Analyzing survey data (Stata preferred)
• Interpreting analytical results, both descriptive and regression-based
• Writing up findings
• Participating in brief research meetings

Required Skills / Background: 

• Prior coursework in quantitative research methods and/or statistics
• Proficiency in State for data cleaning, analysis, and visualization
• Strong attention to detail and ability to document progress
• Interest in topics related to higher education pathways and inequalities

Directions for Applying: 
Interested students should email a brief statement (~1 paragraph) describing their relevant coursework, Stata experience, and research interests to Christina Ciocca Eller at cceller@fas.harvard.edu, CC’ing Dr. Emily Fairchild at efairchild@fas.harvard.edu. Please include a CV and, if available, an example of prior data work.

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Project Head: Sam Donahue

Project Title: Elite Closure at the Turn of the 20th Century. 
This project explores social closure among elites at the turn of the twentieth century using archival records drawn from social registries and historical news clippings. Social registries were once the final word on inclusion in high society, listing place of residence, familial ties, and club affiliations. These lists were dynamic, with elites removed and added from season to season. Why and when did some elites fall out of favor and others remain? How can we learn about the concentration of power in elite networks today by considering elite networks of the past?

Skills and Tasks:
These records have been digitized and centralized but require significant processing and organization. Accordingly, strong organizational and data management skills are a plus. The ideal candidate should be comfortable programming in Python (experience with R is a bonus) and using large language models (LLMs). The research assistant will be expected to extract high‑dimensional data from complex archival documents that are only partially standardized.

Requirements:
Over the course of the semester, the student will work to create a scalable data ingestion process that can be applied to social registries and news clippings. The student will be expected to meet with the faculty weekly to discuss progress. 

Directions for Applying:
Please send a brief description of your interest in the project, your CV, and any other relevant materials, including examples of programming work, to Samuel_donahue@fas.harvard.edu, cc'ing efairchild@fas.harvard.edu. 

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Project Head: Flavia C. Peréa

Project Title: Boys in School: Trajectories from the classroom to the world
Boys have fallen behind in educational attainment compared to girls: In comparison to girls, boys have lower grades, are more likely to drop out of school, and are less likely to matriculate into and graduate from college. School age boys are more likely to be disciplined in school and are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD in comparison to girls. 

This project will explore current trends and patterns in the education of boys and review relevant literature to understand what is happening to our boys in school and their trajectories from high school to college, young adulthood, and the world. 

Skills and Tasks:
Gather and compile key findings from published reports on boys’ academic engagement and educational outcomes, including grades, test scores, HS graduation, post-secondary education, and entry into the workforce.

• Review the literature in 1-2 of the following areas (TBD) and develop a bibliography outlining key findings:
  • The developmental, educational and social needs of boys in adolescence and early adulthood
  • Sociocultural factors that intersect with education to (negatively) impact the education and development of boys in school and beyond
  • The relationship between boys’ educational outcomes, and the structure of schooling and dominant educational practices
  • The optimal conditions and educational characteristics to nurture engaged and flourishing boys
• Summarize and synthesize findings for a public audience. This is TBD and may include charts, tables, slides, infographics, Canva boards, and/or other public facing materials as appropriate.

Requirements:

• Interest in education and the development of boys
• Excellent research skills and experience with library research (HOLLIS and academic research databases) and internet research (online resources of published information such as through think tanks, foundations, and government agencies)
• Strong organizational skills and ability to work well independently
• Curiosity and engagement!

Directions for Applying:
Email Flavia Perea, Director, Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship and Lecturer, Sociology, at flaviaperea@fas.harvard.edu, cc’ing efairchild@fas.harvard.edu. Attach your resume and a few sentences about your interests and what you are interested in working on for this project.

Fall 2025 OPPORTUNITIES

Project Head: Jason Beckfield

Project Title: Climate Sociology Lab: Participatory Action Research 
The Climate Sociology Lab invites collaborative and community-minded students to work with us on Participatory Action Research. PAR is an engaged style of research that builds on relationships between academic and non-academic organizations to develop new knowledge through action with and for communities confronting resource inequities and power imbalances. In the Climate Sociology Lab, we work with community-based organizations like the Lowlander Center to develop new research questions and generate new answers by privileging indigenous and other experiential and localized ways of knowing about pressing problems of environmental and climate injustices.

Skills and Tasks:
Tasks include relational work to cultivate existing research relationships and establish new ones; learning principles of indigenous and participatory research methods; analyzing and synthesizing current peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed research on environmental and climate justice; gathering primary and secondary data from interviews, observations, and archives; investigating economic opportunities for overburdened communities, often in the form of grants; contributing to grant-writing; documenting the successes of environmental justice organizations; estimating and interpreting quantitative models; and using and evaluating AI-based research tools.

Requirements:
Collaboratively develop a work plan with specific deliverables for the semester. Attend meetings of and occasionally present work to the Climate Sociology Lab, which meets on alternating Wednesday mornings at 9:45.

Directions for Applying:
Please send an application to jwb@g.harvard.edu, cc’ing jbeckfie@gmail.com and efairchild@fas.harvard.edu, including (1) your name, email address and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.

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Project Head: Danilo Mandić

Project Title: Bad Refugees: Stigma and Forced Migration
Note: This project can count as a methods elective for the Data Analytics concentration track or the Data Analytics in Sociology secondary. If you would like to receive methods elective credit, please indicate that in your application.

We invite students interested in being Research Assistants for a project on forced migration: refugees and displaced people in the 20^th and 21^st century. RAs will be tasked with content-analyzing, coding and interpreting refugee indicators. Datasets include a ProQuest-created sample of refugee coverage (3 million articles), public opinion polls/surveys, UNHCR data on displacement, and archival materials on major refugee-related treaties, conferences and peace processes between states.. Students will learn about the nature, causes and consequences of forced migration in historical perspective, as well as about the processes of scapegoating and stigmatization - ethno-racial, cultural, geopolitical - that we attach to refugees.

Skills and Tasks:
Two separate sets of tasks are available, separately: (1) AI/Machine Learning coding of datasets, especially if student has experience with pre-trained models that can disaggregate large numbers of mentions of refugees in press coverage into ethnic and other identifiers; or (2) reading and synthesizing secondary sources, documents, reports, testimonials. Students may learn skills in both quantitative and qualitative methods, including coding, content analysis, the logic of comparative social science and sampling, archival digging, evaluating sources, differentiating factoids from context in testimonies, reviewing literature, and techniques for judging credibility of primary and secondary sources on politicized issues. RAs will train to become strong critical thinkers and analysts in a customized, small-group setting.

Requirements:
Meetings with the instructor will be every two weeks, and students are expected to produce assignments regularly and promptly (e.g. transcripts, coding schemes, etc.) as agreed. Priority will be given to CS-trained applicants, or those with knowledge of AI/machine learning options for coding texts.

Directions for Applying:
Please send an application to mandic@fas.harvard.edu, cc’ing efairchild@fas.harvard.edu, including your (1) name, email and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.

Faculty Name: Adaner Usmani

Project Title: Mass Incarceration in Comparative and Historical Perspective
Note: This project can count as a methods elective for the Data Analytics concentration track or the Data Analytics in Sociology secondary. If you would like to receive methods elective credit, please indicate that in your application.

Project Description: American mass incarceration is one of the major social problems of our times. The United States incarcerates more people than perhaps any other country in world history except for Stalin's Soviet Union. Those it incarcerates are disproportionately likely to be poor and nonwhite.

Scholars have offered various compelling explanations for American mass incarceration, but one of the weaknesses of most work on punishment is that it seeks to understand America by studying just America 

This project seeks to bring comparative and historical perspective to the study of the American carceral state. We aim to gather several kinds of historical data on punishment, policing and violence in other countries (with a focus on other advanced capitalist countries and Latin America).

Research Tasks and Final Work Product: The RA will be responsible for collecting these data, which will involve reading and transcribing archival documents, trawling for new sources online, maintaining an existing database, emailing scholars in the field, scrutinizing existing data that we have gathered, and more. This continues research done by other RA's over the past two years, so there is a lot to do and a lot to build on. You'll be joining a team of RA's from Harvard and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as some independent scholars. 

I will ask that you write weekly summaries of what you have done. You will also meet once weekly with me and the rest of the research team. 

Required Skills/Background: Spreadsheet and basic quantitative skills to curate and maintain the dataset. More advanced skills (programming, webscraping, regression analysis, etc.) would be a real plus. 

To apply: Please send an application to ausmani@fas.harvard.edu, including your (1) name, email and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.

Faculty Name: Adaner Usmani

Project Title: Mass Incarceration in Comparative and Historical Perspective
Note: This project can count as a methods elective for the Data Analytics concentration track or the Data Analytics in Sociology secondary. If you would like to receive methods elective credit, please indicate that in your application.

Project Description: American mass incarceration is one of the major social problems of our times. The United States incarcerates more people than perhaps any other country in world history except for Stalin's Soviet Union. Those it incarcerates are disproportionately likely to be poor and nonwhite.

Scholars have offered various compelling explanations for American mass incarceration, but one of the weaknesses of most work on punishment is that it seeks to understand America by studying just America 

This project seeks to bring comparative and historical perspective to the study of the American carceral state. We aim to gather several kinds of historical data on punishment, policing and violence in other countries (with a focus on other advanced capitalist countries and Latin America).

Research Tasks and Final Work Product: The RA will be responsible for collecting these data, which will involve reading and transcribing archival documents, trawling for new sources online, maintaining an existing database, emailing scholars in the field, scrutinizing existing data that we have gathered, and more. This continues research done by other RA's over the past two years, so there is a lot to do and a lot to build on. You'll be joining a team of RA's from Harvard and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as some independent scholars. 

I will ask that you write weekly summaries of what you have done. You will also meet once weekly with me and the rest of the research team. 

Required Skills/Background: Spreadsheet and basic quantitative skills to curate and maintain the dataset. More advanced skills (programming, webscraping, regression analysis, etc.) would be a real plus. 

To apply: Please send an application to ausmani@fas.harvard.edu, including your (1) name, email and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.

Project Head: Caitlin Daniel

Project Title: Parents’ Food Choices Across the Socioeconomic Spectrum

Socioeconomic disparities in diet quality and diet-related health have attracted significant attention from scholars and the public—not to mention millions of dollars in interventions that have yielded less-than-robust results. This book project, entitled Taste and Necessity: Feeding the Next Generation in an Unequal America, seeks to understand the everyday origins of dietary disparities by examining how parents across the socioeconomic spectrum decide to feed their children. In particular, it examines how parents' food choices arise not just from their material circumstances, but also from the meaning they ascribe to food, family, and childhood. A related project uses a survey experiment to examine how people judge mothers’ food choices differently depending on the mother’s socioeconomic status. Students with interest in class inequalities (and their intersections with race), children and families, culture, food, health, and qualitative data analysis are welcome to apply. 

Project Tasks:
Students will assist in literature reviews, content analysis (of nutrition recommendations, media coverage of dietary disparities, budgeting tips, etc.), coding and analysis of interviews and grocery-shopping observations, and transcription. The survey experiment project will entail similar tasks, with a heavier focus on coding open-ended survey responses.

Requirements:
Meetings with the instructor every two weeks, occasionally more frequently as need arises. Students are expected to produce assignments regularly and promptly (e.g. transcripts, coding schemes, etc.). No prior training is required.

Directions for Applying: 
Please send an application to cdaniel@fas.harvard.edu, cc’ing efairchild@fas.harvard.edu, including your (1) name, email, concentration, and college year, (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project and any relevant coursework or experience, and (3) a short paragraph describing what you hope to get out of working on the project.

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Project Head: Shai Dromi

Project Title: Exploring the gap between aspiration and reality: Social driven students' pathways into career fields

Students often express a desire to contribute to the social good with their acquired college skills, and yet many of them find themselves in the finance sector after graduation. How do students resolve potential tensions between social responsibility and their long term career prospects? This project explores student perceptions of this challenge and ways in which they resolve it through in depth interviews about their career trajectories. 

Skills and Tasks: Conducting semi-structured interviews and data analysis.

Requirements: Background in qualitative research—in particular interviews--is preferred but not required. 

Directions for Applying: Email shai.dromi@g.harvard.edu an expression of interest and background about your interests and experience.

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Project Head: Danilo Mandić

Project Title: Refugees and Forced Migration
Note: This project can count as a methods elective for the Data Analytics concentration track or the Data Analytics in Sociology secondary. If you would like to receive methods elective credit, please indicate that in your application.

We invite students interested in being Research Assistants for a project on forced migration: refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the 20^th and 21^st century. RAs will be tasked with content-analyzing, coding and interpreting refugee indicators such as public opinion polls/surveys, UNHCR data on displacement, press articles and Op-Eds, human rights documents/reports, refugee testimonials, secondary sources, and archival materials. Who are refugees? Where do they come from, and why? How are they displaced? What do they need? How do receiving societies interpret and misinterpret refugee needs? Students will learn about the nature, causes and consequences of forced migration in historical perspective.

Skills and Tasks:
Two separate sets of tasks are available, separately: (1) AI/Machine Learning coding of data set (n=180,000) of op-eds on refugees from WWI to today; or (2) reading and synthesizing secondary sources, documents, reports, testimonials. Students may learn skills in qualitative methods, including basic coding, content analysis, the logic of comparative social science and sampling, archival digging, evaluating sources, differentiating factoids from context in testimonies, reviewing literature, and techniques for judging credibility of primary and secondary sources on politicized issues. RAs will train to become strong critical thinkers and analysts in a customized, small-group setting.

Requirements:
Meetings with the instructor will be every two weeks, and students are expected to produce assignments regularly and promptly (e.g. transcripts, coding schemes, etc.) as agreed. Priority will be given to CS-trained applicants, or those with knowledge of AI/machine learning options for coding texts.

Directions for Applying:
Please send an application to mandic@fas.harvard.edu, cc’ing efairchild@fas.harvard.edu, including your (1) name, email and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.

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Project Head: Adaner Usmani

Project Title: Mass Incarceration in Comparative and Historical Perspective

Project Description: American mass incarceration is one of the major social problems of our times. The United States incarcerates more people than perhaps any other country in world history except for Stalin's Soviet Union. Those it incarcerates are disproportionately likely to be poor and nonwhite.

Scholars have offered various compelling explanations for American mass incarceration, but one of the weaknesses of most work on punishment is that it seeks to understand America by studying just America 

This project seeks to bring comparative and historical perspective to the study of the American carceral state. We aim to gather several kinds of historical data on punishment, policing and violence in other countries (with a focus on other advanced capitalist countries and Latin America).

Research Tasks and Final Work Product: The RA will be responsible for collecting these data, which will involve reading and transcribing archival documents, trawling for new sources online, maintaining an existing database, emailing scholars in the field, and more. This continues research done by other RA's over the past four years, so there is a lot to do and a lot to build on. You'll be joining a team of RA's from Harvard, the University of Sydney, as well as some independent scholars. 

I will ask that you write weekly summaries of what you have done. You will also meet once weekly with me and the rest of the research team. 

Required Skills/Background: Spreadsheet and basic quantitative skills to curate and maintain the dataset. More advanced skills (programming, webscraping, regression analysis, etc.) would be a real plus. 

To apply: Please send an application to ausmani@fas.harvard.edu, cc’ing efairchild@fas.harvard.edu, including your (1) name, email and college year; (2) a paragraph explaining your interest in the project; (3) a paragraph describing relevant coursework and experience.