Research Assistantships

Arjun Purohit, CES Internship Grant Recipient

The Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program is an initiative of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) to internationalize undergraduate education at Harvard. It gives students the chance to work with CES resident faculty members and visiting fellows on a project related to Europe.

Harvard College students who have participated in this valuable program in the past have researched many interdisciplinary topics on Europe. Many recipients of the assistantships have continued their work through the summer. General requirements are:

Assistantships involve meaningful research and usually require between 5-10 hours per week. The hourly rate is $20.00.
Only currently enrolled undergraduate students are eligible and must reside on campus when work is conducted.

Current Openings

Research Position in History – Belonging in Transition
This research assistantship offers the opportunity for Harvard College students to conduct research for one of our Center’s visiting scholars from Europe.

The qualified candidate will assist the visiting scholar in developing a book project that traces the intellectual and social history of the late Habsburg Empire. The research assistant will help to analyze primary sources; review press coverage; conduct research on selected U.S. émigré organizations of different confessions (e.g., Protestant, Jewish) and ethnicities (e.g. Hungarian, Slovak, Jewish, Ukrainian/Ruthene, Serbian); and examine how these communities reacted to selected political events in Austria-Hungary.

This position is for a candidate with an interest in East-Central Europe, theories of nationalism, and discourse analysis.

This assistantship takes place during the fall 2025 semester and the spring 2026 semester.

Required skills:
- strong research skills.
- experience in performing archival work
- ability to synthesize primary sources.
Preferred skills:
- basic knowledge of the history of East-Central Europe.
- reading proficiency in one of the following languages: Slovak, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Yiddish, or Ukrainian.
Pay: $20/hr.

To submit your application, please send your materials directly to Anna Adorjáni via anna_adorjani@fas.harvard.edu.
Research Position in Economics – How Markets Shape Speech. Economic Incentives in Speech Markets
This research assistantship offers the opportunity for Harvard College students to conduct research for one of our Center’s visiting scholars from Europe.

The research project examines how economic incentives influence which kinds of content are produced, disseminated, and amplified in traditional and contemporary speech markets, and how legal regulation in turn shapes those incentives. It focuses on the interaction between market structure, business models, and speech content in different U.S. markets, ranging from traditional markets such as the press, broadcast media, and book publishing to global social media platforms. While the project’s primary focus is on the United States, it will also consider, in a comparative perspective, how recent European regulatory initiatives – especially the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) – might alter platform incentives.

The research assistant will support the visiting scholar in developing a structured literature review on economic models of speech markets. In particular, the research assistant will:
- summarize and compare economic theories and models that explain how market structures influence the diversity, quality, and distribution of U.S. speech markets.
- identify, collect, and organize published academic articles and textbook accounts that analyze how economic incentives (e.g., advertising models, subscription models, platform monetization, ownership concentration) affect available speech and media content.
Required skills:
- interest in and completed coursework in economics.
- interest in questions of media, communication, and regulation.
- ability to search academic databases for academic literature.
- strong qualitative analysis skills; ability to summarize and explain models.
Preferred skills: Prior experience with economic modeling and media economics.

This assistantship takes place during the fall 2025 semester and the spring 2026 semester.

Pay: $20/hr.

To submit your application, please send your materials directly to Christian Neumaier via cneumeier@fas.harvard.edu.