Undergraduate Research Assistant, LBJ School

Job Posting Title:

Undergraduate Research Assistant, LBJ School

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Hiring Department:

Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs

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Position Open To:

All Applicants

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Weekly Scheduled Hours:

10

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FLSA Status:

Non-Exempt from FLSA

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Earliest Start Date:

Jun 08, 2026

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Position Duration:

Expected to Continue Until Aug 15, 2026

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Location:

UT MAIN CAMPUS

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Job Details:

General Notes

This opportunity is open to current undergraduate students at the LBJ School.

About The University of Texas at Austin

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The University of Texas at Austin, founded in 1883, ranks among the 40 best universities in the world with top national programs across 19 colleges and schools. By creating educational opportunities for all and leading cutting-edge research at scale, the University fosters positive social change, technological advancement, and economic progress showing the world that change really does start here.

An organizational priority is to successfully make UT the world’s highest-impact public research university, unleashing knowledge, opportunity and innovation from the heart of Texas.

Learn more about UT’s mission and values, and leadership.

About The LBJ School of Public Affairs

The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the nation’s premier public policy schools. As Texas’ top-ranked policy school for over five decades, the LBJ School provides unmatched opportunities for students to engage with policymakers, industry leaders and innovators in Austin and beyond. The school is committed to improving the quality of public service in the United States and abroad at all levels of governance and civic engagement. Our goals are to prepare students and professionals for leadership positions in public service, produce interdisciplinary research to advance our understanding of complex societal problems and create solutions, promote effective public policy and management practice and foster civic engagement on issues of public concern.

Committed to advancing the quality of public service, the LBJ School continues to drive education, research and civic engagement at all levels of governance. 

Purpose

Professor Michael Wahman at the LBJ School is seeking an undergraduate research assistant (URA) to assist with content coding of English-language parliamentary speeches from Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. This opportunity is open to current undergraduate students at the LBJ School. The hired URA will work for 10h/week throughout the summer, with some flexibility.  The position is suitable for students interested in machine learning/African politics and/or women in politics.

Responsibilities

The URA will be part of a collaborative project between Dr. Michael Wahman (LBJ School), Dr. Nikolaos Frantzeskakis (University of Birmingham, the United Kingdom), and Dr. Valeriya Mechkova (University of Gothenburg, Sweden). The project uses a unique dataset of parliamentary transcripts to establish how members of parliament have changed their engagement on issues related to women’s rights over time. Has the increase in female political representation translated to more effective representation of women’s issues? If so, have male and female MPs responded equally to the increased presence of female legislators?

The RA will work collaboratively (remotely) with a group of RAs from the University of Birmingham in the UK. The URA will mainly work to code the content of a large number of speeches. The URA will receive training in content coding by Nikolaos Frantzeskakis, an expert in machine learning. The hand-coded speeches will be used to train a neural network transformer model. No prerequisites are necessary. A previous paper from the project, using similar data, is available here. 

Required Qualifications

There are no prerequisites for the position, but it is suitable for students interested in machine learning/African politics and/or women in politics.

Relevant education and experience may be substituted as appropriate.

Preferred Qualifications

None.

Salary Range

$17.00 per hour