[Air-L] Quantitative Research Assistant Position - Student & Campus Protest Events Project

[Alex Hanna]

External link
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JF1Wwp50uvjN3XCvZ8g6gRjjLGAQf5vv0OVS5BpakJY/preview>


Project Description

This research study examines patterns in campus protest movements as well
as university responses to protest and protest policing in the United
States and Canada from 2012 to 2018. The analytic focus is on student
anti-racism movements. The project’s research objectives are to: (1)
explain the factors that facilitated student mobilization, particularly on
anti-racism and labor issues, and its diffusion across campuses and
countries; (2) learn the factors determining university administrations’
and police departments’ responses; and (3) understand the relationship
between competing claims from protesters and administrators.

We are creating the Student & Campus Protest Events Dataset, an innovative
dataset based on student and campus protests reported in student
newspapers. Approximately 25% of the protest events in the dataset also
include data on university leaders’ reactions to protest and/or protest
policing activities. Theoretically, the project brings together the
sociological study of social movements, organizations, policing, and
political culture by using techniques of machine learning and sociological
coding as well as quantitative, interpretive, and relational analysis. The
analyses will demonstrate the back-and-forth interactive dynamics -- in
which activists organize, protest spreads (or not), and targeted leaders
respond (or not) -- that are fundamental to social movement mobilization.
The end goals are to explain the key ways that movements try to generate
social change and the way that institutions attempt to manage protest. We
also expect to develop partnerships with student social movement networks
and to translate the findings so they are useful to student activists.

Job Description

You will work on merging the event dataset with institutional data, other
protest event data (e.g. BLM), Twitter data, and other local data from
cities and campuses (e.g., census, voting data). You also will check data
quality and perform quantitative data analysis. This position is for one
year and 20 hours a week. It also has the potential for co-authorship with
the PIs.

Requirements

   -

   Quantitative research experience, including basic knowledge of
   multivariate statistics
   -

   Experience with packages for data collection, data manipulation, and
   data cleaning, namely R and/or Python
   -

   Interest in social movements, political sociology, race, organizations,
   and/or policing
   -

   Bachelor’s Degree in quantitative social science, such as political
   science, sociology, psychology, economics, or a related field


Preferred qualifications

   -

   Knowledge of time-series and spatial data, including but not limited to
   survival analysis, diffusion modeling, and spatial analysis
   -

   Experience with geospatial methods (e.g. translation from named
   locations to geospatial coordinates)
   -

   Master’s, PhD, or current graduate student in quantitative social
   science, such as political science, sociology, psychology, economics, or a
   related field


Application instructions
Please send a CV, a cover letter, and the names and email addresses of two
references to Alex Hanna (alex.hanna at gmail.com) and Ellen Berrey (
ellen.berrey at utoronto.ca). Individuals from underrepresented racial and
gender groups are encouraged to apply. Applications are due May 19, 2022.

-- 
Alex Hanna, PhD
alex-hanna.com
Director of Research, DAIR Institute <https://www.dair-institute.org/>
Co-Chair, Sociologists for Trans Justice (s4tj.com)
Book some time with me: https://calendly.com/dr-alex-hanna