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Farrell Fellow Projects Closed to New Applications

Professor Ana Arjona | The Legacies of Civil War in Colombia

Project: What are the legacies of civil war oon the individuals and communities that endure it? This project seeks to investigate how experiences during wartime influence political behavior and local politics in Colombia. Studies across various disciplines have investigated the effects of wartime violence on different outcomes; yet this literature misses a crucial distinction: civil war is about much more than violence, chaos and destruction. Societies undergoing civil war experience complex social, political and economic transformations. Armed groups rely on many strategies beyong violence and interact with societal actors not just as their perpetrators but also as their allies, competitors, and rulers. Institutions change and, with them, the patterns of social economic, and political interaction. This project seeks to investigate the legaciesof these wartime experiences on political behavior and local politics.

Position & Time Commitment 

  •  Hours will be split between two (2) Fellows 
  • Hours across weeks will be flexible and can be determined in consulation with the professor to accommodate the fellows schedule
  • This position can be held remotly.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will:

  • Participate in processing and analyzing empirical evidence recently collected in Colombia.
  • Conduct focus groups and interviews in various communities where guerrillas, paramilitaries, and criminal groups have operated throughout the country.
  • Gather data on the current situation of communities; individuals' views on the civil war, meomory, and its legacies; and the presence and activities of various types of non-state actors.
  • Organizing, coding, and analyzing some of this evidence using NVivo, a software for analyzing qualitative data.
  • Assist in conduction literature reviews related to the project.

The Fellow participating in this project will gain: 

  • Learn about the dynamics of civil war and their long-term impacts on individuals and communities.
  • Develop proficiency in data analysis using NVivo software.
  • Learn to assess the state of the art in a field and intergrate it into a research project.
  • Improve research and analytical skills by finding, analyzing, synthesizing, and reporting on mulitple sources.
  • Enhances analytical skills through the critical evaluation of data and the identification of patterns and trends.

Preferred Skills and Experiences 

  • Proficiency in Spanish.
  • Previous courseswork in comparative politics.
  • Strong interest in learning to use NVivo.
  • Strong interested in learning about politics in rural areaas, political violence, and its legacies and/or local goverance.
  • Zotero
  • LaTeX

Learn more about Professor Ana Arjona 

 

Professor Jaime Dominguez | Exploring the 2023 Chicago Mayoral Election

Project: The project seeks to examine voter participation trends in the 2023 mayoral election. Specifically, want to look at voter registration rates and turnout in black and Latino wards. Data will be collected from the Chicago Board of Elections and other scholarly reports. All data will be gathered at the precinct-level for each ward. The goal is to generate new color-coded maps that detail these trends for all wards. Of particular interest is gauging the mayoral support to see where, which pockets in the city are favorite the mayoral and his policy platforms. 

Position & Time Commitment

  • This position can be held remotly.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will:

  • Enter and organize the data into Excel spreadsheets and will use NVivo to learn to code qualitative data.
  • Be in charge of generating literature reivew reports based on the research questions of interest.
  • Learn to submit FOIA requestions to government agencies and media outlets.

The Fellow participating in this project will gain:

  • Improve their writing skills and communication skills.
  • Learn to analyze data qualitative and quantitative data.
  • Learn about urban politics and governance and about Chicago politics

Preferred Skills and Experience

  • Strong interpersonal and communication skills
  • Strong writing and analytical skills
  • Excel
  • NVivo
  • ArcGIS

Learn more about Professor Jaime Dominguez

Professor Loubna El Amine | Beyond Freedom and Slavery: Inclusion in the Ancient Confucian Political Community

Project: This book project is motivated by the question of how the ancient Chinese conceptualized the political community in the absence of the freedom and slavery duality that has been so central to political thinking in the West. I reconstruct the ancient Confusion conception of the political community on the basis of the portrayal, in the Five "Confucian" Classics, of those persons who occupy low positions in the social hierarchy: women, concubines, servants, peasants, artisans, convicts, and foreigners. 

Position & Time Commitment:

  • This position with be 40 hours per week.
  • This position can be held remotely

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will:

  • Search for, read, summarize, and annotate contemporary secondary literature in both Chinese and English on topics related to the book.

The Fellow(s) participating in this project will gain:

  • Learn how to write a good precis of articles and books, summarizing succinctly the main arguments and using proper citation form.
  • Gain first-hand experience of how research in political theory, and especially the history of political thought, proceeds.

Preferred Skills and Experience

  • Critical reading skills 
  • Proficiency in reading modern, and ideally Classical Chinese

Learn more about Professor Loubna El Amine 

Professor Daniel Galvin and Professor Chloe Thurston | The Politics of US Industrial Policy

Project: This project examines the evolution and political consequences of American indsutrial policy. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act both represent varieties of industrial policy, broadly defined as when the government strategically supports, subsidizes, or protects certain industries. The use of industrial policy is by no means new in the United States, but its open embrase by the Biden Administration sharply contrasts to nearly 40 of deference to "neoliberal" economic ideas and policymaking frameworks. Recent expiments have explicity engaged the idea of "place-based industrial policy," which entails not only the selection of industries for government support, but the inentional selection of regions in order to build economic, civic, and organizational resilence. Our aim in this project is twofold: first to map out the ideational and institutional scope of industrial policy since the mid-twentieth century, and second, to examine the political consequences of place-based industrial policy through comparative case study analyses. 

Position & Time Commitment:

  • The time commitment for this project will remain steady across the quarters.
  • This position can be held remotely.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will:

  • Work with Professor Galvin and Professor Thurston on a handful of tasks related to the overall project, including:
    • Conducting literature reviews and help to gather background information about the history of industrial policy and characteristics of specific regions.
    • Assisting with gathering data (qualitative and quantitative) to help inform regional case selection.
    • Working collaboratively with both PI's to develop interivew protocols and lists of possible interview subjects.
    • (Contingent on timing and availability): to help carry out regional cases study research, including by participating in zoom interviews.

The Fellow(s) participating in this project will gain:

  • Conduct literature reviews
  • Conduct historial researching using a variety of sources
  • Learn about industrial policy
  • Learn about the economic and organizational infrastructure of specific U.S. localities
  • Learn some skills in qualitative and quantitative data analysis
  • Gain experience working collaboratively on research
  • (Possibly) Gain experience conducting interviews
  • Learn about IRB procedures

Preferred Skills and Experience

  • An interest in conducting historical and place-based research strong organizational skills and attention to detail
  • An interest in economic policy and the policy making process 

Learn more about Professor Daniel Galvin & Professor Chloe Thurston 

Professor Laurel Hardbridge-Yong | Threats and Violence Targeting America's Elected Officials: Reactions from Elites and the General Public

Project: In recent years, threats and violence have targeted elected officials at all levels of government. These threats of physical harm and instances of actual viiolence are aimed at intimidating political actors and changing their political behavior in ways consistent with the political preferences of the people issuing the threats. They are thus a form of political terrorism or political violence that extends beyond a rise in political incivility. These phenomena constitue an important challenge to a democratic society. We are interested in two core areas of this problem: 

  1. These patterns may influence elected officials and staff, contributing to deependiing polarization, increased anxiety, and anger, shifts in patterns of governing and representation, an a lower likelihood of staying politics among others.
  2. Public responses to these threats and instances of violence may reflect partisan identities and biases against the opposing party, limiting our collective ability to respond to the challenge posed by these behaviors

This project explores how harassment, threats and violence against elected officials affects elected officals across the country, surveys of states legislators, mayors and staff, and survey experiments of the American public. As part of a team of researchers at Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Chicago, my research assistant with be responsible for tassks on each of these components - e.g., de-identification and content analysis of the interviews, assistance designing and analyzing the surveys, etc. - as well as assisting in conduction literature reviews and synthesizing media coverage on the topic. 

Position & Time Commitment

  • The time commitment for this project
    • Up to 20 hours a week for the summer for 13 weeks (part-time)
    • Up to 10 hours a week during the academic year
  • This position can be held remotely.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will:

  • Read and analyze transcripts from interviews with elected officials.
  • Assist in designing and testing surveys of elected officials and public.
  • Assist in literature review on the topic.
  • Readand synthesize news coverage of threats and violence against elected officials. 
  • Meet regularly (e.g., once a week) with me to discuss the projected.

The Fellow(s) participating in this project will gain:

  • Gain a greater understanding of Political Science research - including how we move from research questions, to hypotheses, to data and to analysis.
  • Improved critical thinking skills.
  • Exposure to specific tools and skill sets that may be relevant in other research (e.g., content analysis, survey design, etc.).

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Attention to detail
  • Critical eye when evaluating written work
  • Ability to think systematically
  • Some knowledge of American politics
  • Strong time management

Learn more about Professor Laurel Harbridge-Yong

Professor Daniel Krcmaric | Wanted: The Hunt for Fugitive Criminals

Project: From the Nazi war criminals who fled Europe at the end of the World War II to modern cases such as Edward Snowden and the Boston Marathon bombers, manhunts capture the popular imagination. While journalists have written a great deal on manhunts and fugitives, scholars have generally paid less attention to this important issue. This research project addresses the sources of success and failure in manhunts. This is, why are some wanted fugitivs quickly located and apprehended whereas others manage to evade capture for decades? My tentative answer draws a distinction between "lone wolf fugitives" and "networked fugitives" those who can rely on a broader socopolitical movement to provide logistical support, financial assistance, and places to hide. The empirical portion of this project focuses on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. This famous list was the brainchild of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and debuted in 1950. Since then, 532 people have appeard on the list. These fugitives span the global (such as terrorist Osama bin Laden and Ruja Ignatova, the so-called "missing cryptoqueen") and the domestic (mobster Whitey Bulger and James Earl Ray, the killer of Martin Luther King, Jr.). The goal is to create a systematic dataset of these fugitives that include information about their lives, their crimes, their time on the run, and ultimately their capture or death.

Position & Time Commitment:

  • Two (2) Fellows will work approximately 250 hours each over the summer. Fellows can pick between a full-time 40 hours per week position for about six weeks or a part-time position for the entire summer
  • This position can be remote

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellows will:

  • Assist Professor Krcmaric track down, organize, and analyze information about the 532 individuals who have appeared on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List bewteen its inception in the 1950 and the present day. 

The Fellows participating in this project will gain:

  • Knowledge about the politics surrounding fugitives and the history of the FBI more broadly.
  • Skills regarding the creation and maintenance of a data set
  • Experience in the research progress - learning how a project evolves and develops over the course of its lifespan.

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Experience with Excel 

Learn more about Professor Daniel Krcmaric

Professor Brian Libgober | Who Governs the Association?

Project: Industry associations provide a crucial channel for the transmission of elite public opinion about the advisability of certain policies. They are also by reputation and according to observable metrics some of the most important and influential lobbying organizations around. But who's interests do trade associations represent, and why among their members? By linking IRS non-profit tax records from 2009 - 2020, data form the Encyclopedia of Associations, lobbying records filed uinder the Lobbying Disclosure Act as well as biographical information from BoardEx and public social media profiles, we conduct a study inspired by Dahl's famous "Who Governs?: to examine who giverns US trade associations and provide a roadmap for future research on the topic by discussing a number of more specific questions. These include:

  • Are inequalities in resources of influence "cumulative" or noncumulative?" That is, do firms which are well represented on the boards of trade associations also rank highly on other commonly used measures of political influence?
  • How do trade associations make political decisions?
  • What kinds of firms and people have the greatest influence on decisions of trade associations? From what sectors and from which strata within a secotr are board members and the firms they represent? How frequent are interlocking trade association board memberships?
  • Do trade association board members tend to cohere in the policies promoted by the association or do they tend to conflict and bargain? Is the pattern of leadership oligarchical or pluralistic?
  • Are the patterns of influence in trade associations durable or changing? In general, what are the sources of change stability in the ecosystem of trade associations?
  • How important is the concept of egalitarianism among members for the functioning of trade associations?

Even as we leave many of these questions for future research, we present the first systematic evidence on the backgrounds of board members of trade associations, examine turnover on their boards and evaluate the hypthesis that corporations may at times be able to capture associations and extend their political influence. Our draft of the "agenda settling" paper is nearing the submission stage, however we are looking to dig deeper into each of these individual components and prepare separate submission. Research assistants are expected to move between 1 - 3 of these particular sub-questions depending on the project is doing.

Position & Time Commitment:

  • Hours will be split between two (2) Fellows who ideally work 5 - 10 hours each per week during term time.
  • This position can be held remotely.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellows will:

  • Prepare publication quality figures and tables;
  • Canvas the academic literature for scholarship that is related to our inquiry;
  • Canvas journalistic accounts to identify articles that are related to our inquiry;
  • Find and link outside data sources to our growing database.
  • Analyze governance documents for trade associations.

The Fellow participating in this project will gain:

  • The opportunity to get involved in a hands-on in the research process, developing familiarity with contemporary research methodologies, data analysis, and communication practices 
  • Better insights into the field of political science and social science more generally, as well as the policymaking process and the function of private organizations 
  • The chance to work with an international team leading scholars working on the topic of money in politics
  • The opportunity to develop general professional skill including time management, project management, communication, and so forth, which are transportable across settings
  • Strengthening critical thinking skills, in particular, learning how to ask questions, data, and theories in ways that are seldom taught (and hard to teach) in the classroom setting.

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • R or Python
  • LaTeX

Learn more about Professor Brian Libgober

Professor Mary McGrath | Friends & Family Climate Change Book Club

Project: When people are equipped with shared information and structured discussion-guidance, can potentially difficult conversations with personally-close but ideologically-distant others lead to:

  • A decrease in "political sectarian" attitudes
  • Opinion change, and
  • Increased political engagement on an issue.

This project is a field experiment focused on climate change attitudes and opinions, designed to test these using referral sampling to recruit personally-close but ideologically-distant discussion pairs into the study. The discussion partners know each other personally (friends/family/co-workers) and hold opinions opposite to each other on climate change. Outcomes measured for participants in four conditions will include pre-/post- survey responses on political attitudes and beliefs, as well as a behavioral measure collected online (writing to your representative) and qualitative data from recorded meetings and exit interviews.

 Position & Time Commitment

As part of this project, Fellow(s) will be:

  • Assisting mentor with research, e.g.: reviewing and coding recorder interviews
  • Conducting literature reviews and writing literature summaries

This project will be worked on during the Winter Quarter and the Spring Quarter. This project is able to be remote.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) participating in this project will gain:

  • Learn how to conduct qualitative data analysis 
  • How to use NVivo software

Preferred Skills & Experience

  • A high level of general research-related skills: excellent attention to detail, organizational skills, creative and proactive problem-solving
  • Experience with NVivo or eagerness to learn it

Learn more about Professor Mary McGarth 

Professor Julie Lee Merseth | Anti-Asian Racism and Asian American Political Resistance

Project: This project examines Asian American beliefs about anti-Asian racism and collective political resistance in the United States. Amidst heightened racial anxieties and xenophobic impulses during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to understand Asian American political (in)action in response to surges in racist rhetoric and hate crimes is increasingly urgent. Yet we still know too little about when and why some Asian Americans perceive a need to organize as a group, and potentially across groups, while others do not. In this study, I investigate how anti-Asian racism beliefs among Asian Americans shape their responses to it, paying close attention to identity, experience, and status differences within the group. 

Position & Time Commitment 

  • Seeking two Fellows for the summer and fall quarters (June 2023 – December 2023) 

Research Training & Outcomes 

The Fellow(s) will: 

  • Collect and analyze original data: in-depth interviews, large-N surveys, media content 
  • Write research memos and annotated bibliographies 
  • Meet regularly as a research team 

The Fellow(s) participating in this project will: 

  • Observe and gain hands-on experience across different stages of the research process 
  • Develop and strengthen skills in conducting qualitative and quantitative research 
  • Cultivate a passion for pursuing rigorous and engaged political science research 
  • Contribute to advancing the study of Asian American politics and racial group politics in the U.S. 

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Required: excellent communication (speaking, writing) and organizational skills, including attention to detail and ability to multitask 
  • Strongly preferred but not required: experience with conducting interviews; knowledge of statistics and familiarity with R; coursework related to racial and ethnic politics and/or immigration in the U.S. 
  • Strongly valued but not required: speaking or writing proficiency in an Asian language (e.g., Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) 

Learn more about Professor Julie Lee Merseth 

Professor Sara Monoson | Classical Reception Studies: Summoning Socrates & Aristotle Beyond the Academy

Project: "Summoning Socrates" and "Aristotle Beyond the Academy" are distinct classical receptions projects being developed in tandem.   

Summoning Socrates is based at Northwestern and is well-developed already. It compiles, catalogs, digitizes and analyzes an archive of examples of uses of Socrates in a wide range of popular media in a variety of settings in the US and internationally in the 20th and 21st centuries. Farrell fellows in past years have helped build the archive's US and international content. In spring 2023 we are starting to work with a digital humanities librarian at University Library to design a website. A book project is also under way. 

Aristotle Beyond the Academy is a large international project based in Durham, UK involving a set of scholars. I am on the advisory board and will contribute some US sources of a sort like the kind of material collected in the Summoning Socrates archive. Their website also debuts in April 2023.  

I will be guest editor for six months next year for the blog for the Oxford, UK- based Classical Receptions Studies Network (CRSN). A Fellow will be Professor Monoson's editorial assistant. Both projects above will be featured. 

Position & time commitment:  

  • Seeking two Fellows for the fall, winter, and spring quarters (September 2023 – June 2024). 
  • This position can be held remotely. 
  • Positions can be held in conjunction with other work study positions, internships, or research assistantships. 

Research Training & Outcomes 

The Fellow will: 

  • Help research details and context for discrete items 
  • Catalog items on a spreadsheet, and 
  • Digitize records focused on Socrates, especially international items.  
  • Initiate a new excel-based record of sources regarding Aristotle in the US 
  • Assist with editorial work (communications, tracking down things) for the CRSN blog 

The Fellow participating in this project will gain: 

  • Understanding of what goes into building an archive of humanistic sources 
  • Ability to manipulate collections of humanistic data 
  • Command of excel 
  • Knowledge of the extraordinary variety of “conjurings” of ancient figures that speak to contemporary events in meaningful ways 
  • Appreciation of how great sources have many complex afterlives beyond the academy (not only diverse scholarly interpretations) 
  • Editorial experience 

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Detail oriented 
  • Familiarity with the topic (ancient political thought) 
  • Good writing skills 

Learn more about Professor Sara Monoson 

Professor Wendy Pearlman | Personal Testimonials from the Syrian Conflict

Project: Thirteen years since Syria's popular uprising evolved into war, hundredsof thousands have been killed or disappeared, over half the population of 22 million has been forced from their homes, and material destruction registers in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Since 2012, I have conducted open-ended interviews with more than 500 Syrian refugges on five continents. These testimonials document Syrians's stories about life under dictatorship, as well as their experiences of protest, war, displacement, refugee integration, and the larger ways that they make meaning from these experiences.

Since 2016, I have worked with Farrell Fellows to develop a codebook and apply it to code thousands of pages of interview transcripts. I am now hoping to recruit one or two new Farrell Fellows to complete the clean-up and coding of already-conducted interviews, in addition to transcribing a few interviews that remain untranscribed or that I expect to conduct during the summer and academic year. If Farrell Fellows complete this coding, they can begin working on a related project: investigating prospects for making at least some or parts of fully anonymized interviews accesible to others as an archive. 

Position & Time Commitment:

  • Seeking two (2) Fellows for the summer, fall, winter, and/or spring quarters (June 2024 - June 2025). Each fellow need not work every quarter; if you are able to work during some, but not all of these quarters, please do not hestitate to apply!
  • This position can be held remotely.
  • The time commitment and schedule are flexible.

Research Training & Outcomes

Fellows will:

  • Transcribe audio interviews using transcription software and correct errors in the computer-generated transcript in order to produce a clean, accurate transcript.
  • Code interview transcripts after gaining technical fluency in NVivo sofrtware  and becoming proficient in the project codebook and its logic of key terms, concepts, ideas, and expresion.
  • Carefully read interview transcripts (and other collected documents) and code them according to our codebook.
  • Write memos reflecting on the data and offer their own ideas for analysis (i.e. identify research questions, empirical patterns, etc.) 
  • Meet with the research team to discuss the research process and potential research findings. 
  • Search for, read, take notes on, and/or summarize published academic or nonacademic work related themes presented in the interviews.

This project focuses fully on gaining, using, and sharpening widely-applicable and transferable skills in research analysis and will help students develop tools to do their own independent projects in the future. In addition, the Fellows will gain:

  • Substantive expertise on the Syrian conflict
  • Technical fluency in transcription and coding
  • General skills in qualitative analysis, interpretive analysis, and/or story-telling
  • Experience using NVivo software, coding qualitative data, and using coded data to ask and answer research questions
  • Experience working with a research team in a spirt of partnership and camaraderie.
  • An inside view of and involvement in different phases of research processes, including research design, concept development, qualitiative analysis, reasearch ethics, manuscript-writing, and publishing

Preferred Skills & Experiences

  • Interest or background in Middle East politics and Syria are strongly preferred
  • While not required, desirable skills include: experience with NVivo, coding qualitative data, learning new computer softerware, and working with personal narratives and story-telling
  • Students with knowledge of Arabic are especially encouraged to apply

Learn more about Professor Wendy Pearlman 

Professor Matt Pryor | Health Politics

Project: I am interested in the ways in which health differences among citizens may affect the quality of democratic representation as well as how people engage with politics. If people with chronic health conditions are less apt to vote than their healthier counterparts, there is the potential for “representational distortion” if the policy preferences of the separate groups systematically diverge.

Importantly, however, on issues of health care reform, differences between votes and nonvoters are larger than on many other policy issues such as abortion or foreign polixy (Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012; Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2012)

Position & Time Commitment:

  • More work in the fall than summer
  • Roughly 5 - 10 hours a week total
  • This position will need to meet/work in-person

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow will:

  • Assist with research on health and politics
  • Oversee and take part in several stages of the research process including:
    • Pre-registering analysis with OSF
    • Finding and writing about the literature in the field
    • Cleaning data 
    • Creating tables and figures
  • In short, I seek someone to take part in all aspects of the research process

The Fellow participating in this project will gain:

  • Greater understanding of political sceince research
    • Including how we move from research questions, to hypotheses, to data and to analysis
  • Improved critical thinking skills
  • Better insight into the field of political science and social science more genearlly 
  • Develop general professional skills including time management, project management, communications and so forth, which are transportable across settings
  • Critical thinking skills, in particular, learning how to ask questions about data and theories in ways that are seldom taught (and hard to teach) in the classroom  setting.

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Working with STATA 
  • Work on surveys

Learn more about Professor Matt Pryor

Professor Jeff Rice | Work Sites in Present Day Capitalism

Project: The purpose of this investigation is to look at how work is organized from gig workers to baristas, to part-time be it skilled or unskilled, and highly skilled jobs such as programming, coding and design in the high tech world. And in addition, doctors and other medical professionals as their profession is experiencing a major loss of autonomy while their income is being capitated. What issues are there with overtime, benefits, union protection etc. The goal is to see whether labor is making any gains vis-à-vis bosses in many sectors and how it contributes to inequality. Race and Gender will be investigated as part of documenting workers’s reactions to these new conditions.

Position & Time Commitment:

  • I would like students to get this project started with the hopes it will continue and turn into a sequel to my class on the Politics of Capitalism.
  • This postion can be remote.

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellows will:

  • Read first-person accounts of work experience and detemine comparative data points for further investigation.

The Fellow participating in this project will gain:

  • How to use "anecdotal" evidence to create categories to investigate by looking at laws, contracts, union drives, lawsuits, etc.
  • Students will learn how to embed these examples into a broader theory of inequalities in the workplace.

Preferred Skills and Experience

  • Fondness for reading and ability to use Excel
  • Some sense of developing relevant catergories

 

Professor Jacqueline Stevens | Knowing Citizens: Privacy, Secrecy and the Rule of Law

Project: This is an ongoing project in which Fellows do hands-on research investigating the implications of government privacy and secrecy for the rule of law. Specific topics include Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions on so-called national security grounds; the use by military contractors of offset payments; and the competing privacy and good government interests brought to the fore by recent rule changes sealings immigration court proceedings in the federal court electronic database, PACER. Past Farrell Fellow research has resulted in works in progress on immigration judge misconduct, the unlawful deportation of U.S. citizens, and dollar per day payments to those custody under immigration laws. In October, 2021, a federal jury found GEO guilty of minimum wage violations, a lawsuit based on Stevens’ research and to which Farrell Fellows contributed. The media regularly report on findings to which the students contribute. Ongoing research can be viewed here: https://deportation-research.buffett.northwestern.edu . An additional project focuses on unlawful secrecy in Illinois state courts.

Position & Time Commitment

  • Up to 40 per week
  • This position can be remote 

Research Training & Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will: 

  • File, track, and assist in litigating requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 
  • Perform original legal research using academic legal databases 
  • Depending on interest, Fellows may co-author research articles
  • Develop professional scholarly  research and investigative skills, including working knowledge of numerous databases and techniques useful for further academic research and investigative journalism
  • Learn research methods and tools including data analysis, HTML, website management

The Fellow participating in this project will gain:

  • Students will acquire direct knowledge of civil litigation, and policy-making in Congress and the executive branch and develop professional-level research and investigative skills, including knowledge of databases and techniques useful for further graduate-level research and investigative journalism.

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Strong communication skills
  • The ability to problme-solve, work independently, and be persistent in acquiring information
  • Experience with HTML and Excel is helpful, but can be learned on the job
  • Some experience with statistical analysis is preferable but not required.

Learn more about Professor Jacqueline Stevens