Research Associate / PDRI-DevLab

Position description

The Penn Development Research Initiative and DevLab@Penn (PDRI-DevLab) seek to appoint TWO full time PhD-level Research Associates to support PDRI-DevLab’s expanding research portfolio. Candidates will be expected to engage in both independent and collaborative high-quality research, assist in grant proposals, write for both academic and policy audiences, and teach one course annually. Research interests in governance, conflict, migration and forced displacement, climate change and/or computational social science are a plus. Applicants with a strong quantitative background are especially encouraged to apply.

One Research Associate will work on projects across the range of substantive areas described above; many of these involve impact evaluations of international development policies. The other Research Associate will work on a suite of projects cognate to the Machine Learning for Peace project that will involve detecting regime narratives and environmental events in text; the successful candidate for this position would have familiarity with R, Python, and Large Language Models.

These are excellent opportunities to engage with high-level, policy-facing research in a dynamic environment. These are not postdoctoral fellowships. Successful candidates, subject to performance, may be considered for future appointment as Research Assistant Professor. The appointments could begin as early as January, 2025. A PhD or equivalent degree in a relevant social science discipline is expected at the start of the appointment.

Launched in 2020, PDRI-DevLab brings together Penn researchers and students who seek to identify solutions to core challenges facing low- and middle-income countries. PDRI-DevLab fosters impactful, rigorous international development research by harnessing the expertise of its interdisciplinary, vertically integrated team of faculty, postdocs, graduate students, predocs, and undergraduate fellows. Deploying diverse, cutting-edge methodological approaches, PDRI-DevLab catalyzes extramurally funded research projects that include collaborations with development agencies, international NGOs, local NGOs, and government agencies. PDRI-DevLab also serves as an intellectual hub for Penn scholars researching developing countries.
 

Application instructions

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