How to Apply

With support from the Year of Democracy, Civic Empowerment, and Global Engagement, I am seeking to hire up to two (2) Research Assistant positions staring in April 2025 through June 30^th, 2025. The Research Assistant(s) would work with Gabriel Harp, Director of Research and Creative Practice Development, at the Taubman College of Architecture and urban Planning to develop workflows and/or conduct literature reviews (details below). Along with your resume, please submit a cover letter that outlines your specific interest in applied science and technology studies/public policy and/or methods in computational social science, as well as any relevant skills/experiences.

1. Combine your cover letter and resume into a single PDF file.
2. Name your file: Lastname_application.pdf.
3. Upload your PDF to this posting

Applications will be reviewed beginning April 1^st, and shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview. I aim to begin work as soon as candidates are hired, but there is some flexibility depending on candidate needs and schedules.

If you have any questions about this position, please email Gabriel Harp at gharp@umich.edu.

Job Summary & Project

As a Research Assistant on this project, you will help develop and document novel workflows to better characterize, visualize, and interpret open-ended survey and interview responses in order to better capture the topic structure and ambivalence around matters of societal concern such as energy-use, climate change prevention and preparedness, sustainability, emerging technologies, or other issues. Drawing on the adject fields of science and technology studies (STS), public policy, computational social science, design research, and visualization and visual communications methods, the research assistant(s) will collaborate with a small interdisciplinary team to design processes, build analytical tools, generate insights, and produce a “playbook” for use by program designers, policy practitioners, and other researchers. We will also conduct a set of literature reviews and analysis of need for methods that map matters of societal concern from open-ended responses to surveys or interviews. 

I have support to hire up to two (2) research assistants for this project. I would anticipate that one might bring an interest and skills in computational social science, while another might focus on literature searches, scholarly review, and analysis related to matters of concern, applied STS, and visual paradigms for communicating survey and interview responses. While one outstanding candidate could fulfill all tasks, I anticipate hiring two individuals, with differing levels of effort, to focus on complementary work streams. However, candidates should outline their interests, and you are encouraged to discuss what most interests you and how you might envision your approach to the work.

Responsibilities:
Please outline your interests in one or more of these areas in your cover letter.

1. Integrate Computational and Linguistic Approaches
   • Use computational social science methods, software packages, APIs, and large language model (LLM)-based tools to process, classify, and interpret open-ended text responses.
   • Explore and define a toolset of linguistic metrics and measures of ambivalence or integrative complexity within the data.
   • Collaborate on refining and documenting these pipelines in research notebooks (e.g. Jupyter) to ensure usability for non-experts.
2. Develop Visualization Tools & Workflows
   • Create workflows to further process results for visualization.
   • Implement interactive, tree-based visualization techniques that highlight semantic structures, topic hierarchies, and relative weights.
   • Integrate participatory or semi-supervised methods for refining categories and ensuring clarity in the resulting visual outputs.
3. Compile and Review Relevant Literature
   • Conduct scholarly literature reviews, drawing on STS, data visualization, computational social science, controversy mapping / matters-of-concern, and survey research fields.
   • Synthesize key findings to document and outline the theoretical foundations and applications of the project.
   • Maintain a well-organized reference library (e.g., using Zotero or Mendeley).
4. Interview Researchers & Experts
   • Identify, schedule, and conduct interviews with researchers or practitioners in relevant fields (e.g., design research, policy, computational methods, cultural analytics, survey research).
   • Summarize and document insights about best practices, methodological pitfalls, and emerging trends in qualitative data interpretation.
5. Documentation & Playbook Creation
   • Contribute to an accessible “playbook” (process documentation, flowcharts, and annotated code) that captures the workflows, descriptions, concepts, and tools developed.
   • Collaborate with the rest of the team to integrate research findings, user feedback, and cross-disciplinary insights into the final documentation.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work to be performed and are not an exhaustive list of all associated responsibilities. Some flexibility of scheduled work hours may be required. In general, this work will be remote, but we will also plan a regular cadence of in-person milestone meetings to align, share insights, and work towards outcomes together.

Additional Information

• Appointment Period: Approximately April through June; all project deliverables must be completed by June 30^th, 2025. This will be an approximately 2-month design sprint.
• Estimated Effort: 10–20 hours per week for up to 10 weeks with exact hours based on availability and project needs.
• Compensation: $20-25.00 per hour.

Decision-Making Process

Applications will be reviewed starting April 1^st, and selected candidates will be contacted for an interview. I anticipate making hiring decisions starting mid-April with the selected candidate(s) starting to become familiar with the project work and goals as soon as they are available.

Required Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in or completed a degree program related to history and social studies of science, technology, and/or policy; computational/data science; design research; public policy; information science; applied planning; urban technology; or related fields.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively in writing, verbally, and in teams.
• Proven organizational skills, especially in documentation and project coordination.
• Interest in collaborating with a cross-disciplinary team, integrating multiple viewpoints, and learning new methods.

For Research Assistant A (Workflows, Coding, Visualization)

• Preferred proficiency in Python or R, including text analysis and/or visualization libraries.
• Experience with code and workflow documentation in Jupyter notebooks.
• Experience or strong interest in LLM-based AI tools for analyzing textual data.
• Experience with using APIs and command line file navigation and programming.
• Experience with javascript, including D3.js, HTML, and JSON formats.

For Research Assistant B (Literature Review and Scholarly Analysis)

• Familiarity with or willingness to dig into the STS literature around controversy mapping, matters of concern, survey research methods, and visual grammars for visualization and communication of policy issues.
• Previous experience conducting literature reviews or reference management.

Strong interpersonal skills for planning and conducting research interviews.