Dr. Susanne Lohmann (department of Social Science/Political Science) is currently looking for a Research Assistant for their project titled “Universities and the New Nationalism”.  The RA work consists of compiling data sets and visualizing complex data patterns according to the principles of Edward Tufte (go to his website or look up his data visualization books on Amazon).

You can do the RA work off campus (remotely). Every now and then you and Dr. Lohmann will meet in person on campus.

Time Commitment: 5 hours per week, year-round, negotiable duration

Preapproved for credit: PS 99, PS 199, PS 89, PS 189, SRP 99, and SRP 199 credit. In the last three years, three undergraduate students under Dr. Susanne Lohmann have been recipients of the UCLA/Keck Humanistic Inquiry Research Award. You might also take Dr. Lohmann’s game-play-and-data-analysis General Education course Ethics and Governance (PS 60), which comes attached to an Honors Section (PS 89).

Documents to submit: Email Dr. Lohmann at lohmann@ucla.edu: Tell Dr. Lohmann about yourself and your academic and career goals. Why do you want to do research with Dr. Lohmann?

Send materials to: lohmann@ucla.edu

Relevant website: https://polisci.ucla.edu/person/susanne-lohmann/

Job Description:

My goal is to relate the rise of universities approx. 1200 CE to the present day with the process of modernization (“Rise of the West” etc) and levels of development by country and world region. Among other things, I will explore whether colonial heritage matters through the mechanism of university heritage, as in, colonized countries picked up a university heritage from their colonizers, hence former colonies are in receipt of different university heritages depending on (1) the identity of the colonizer (Spanish, English, French, and so forth) and (2) the specific time period in which they were colonized. I will also correlate scientific activity, higher education enrollment, and number of world-class universities with GDP per capita by country and world regions 2003-present.