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Youth and Media Research Opportunities: Full-Time

This position would be a great opportunity for recent college graduates and/or graduate students.  

The Berkman Center’s Youth and Media project seeks full and part time research assistants for its Youth and Media Lab.  Information about the full time role can be found below; read more about the part time positions here.  

Looking to get your hands dirty in research? Are you in search of a full-time academic experience after college or some valuable experience and training before graduate school? Want to collaborate closely with top Harvard researchers and innovative partners in academia, government, and industry?

The Lab brings together young people, leading researchers and developers from the Berkman Center, and mentors from the Center’s broader network to engage creatively with the core challenges and opportunities of youth empowerment and digital citizenship. The Lab’s primary research efforts are focused on information quality, creative rights/content creation, online privacy, and kindness, meanness, and bravery among youth. More information about the Lab, which has grown out the research of John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and collaborators across the world who have studied the ways in which young people are using digital technologies, can be found at: http://youthandmedia.org.

Position Responsibilities:

The Research Assistant’s primary responsibility will be to dive into the Lab’s core research efforts. Academic literature reviews will be fundamental to these efforts, as will the synthesis of material from across education, psychology, ethnography, the social sciences, and policy.

Secondary responsibilities will include activities that connect the Lab's broader research efforts to practice. In addition to conducting multidisciplinary literature reviews, the Lab also collects qualitative data through focus group interviews with young people. These interviews, in turn, inform the development of curricula that can be deployed in school and non-school settings. Enthusiasm for working with a team, building partnerships, and creating successful workshop or seminar experiences is desired for these activities.

Required Education, Experience and Skills:

• Ideally, you have recently graduated from college, or will soon, and are looking for a research opportunity before graduate studies
• Advanced writing and editing skills, with the ability to quickly draft and contextualize written materials within the suite of the project outputs
• Excellent critical reading comprehension, with the ability to absorb material quickly
• Advanced research skills
• Attention to detail
• Knowledge of issues surrounding youth engagement with digital media
  

Additional Skills/Interests Helpful for This Position:

• Expertise in fields such as education, anthropology (ethnography), psychology, human development, sociology, or law
• Reviewing and synthesizing large amounts of multidisciplinary academic material
• Previous teaching experience
• Familiarity with qualitative data collection
• Familiarity with data analysis
• Familiarity with curricular development
  

The Research Assistant Will Have the Opportunity to:

• Boost his or her research credentials
• Creatively bridge research and practice
• Become a key member of the Youth and Media team
• Participate in the greater-Berkman Center community, and in ongoing dynamic conversations at the forefront of thought on technology and society.
  

General Academic Year Intern/Research Assistant Information and Eligibility:

• We are unable to hire Interns/RAs who live outside of the state of Massachusetts.
• We do not have the ability to provide authorization to work in the U.S.
• Interns/RAs do not have to be students.
• Interns/RAs do not have to be affiliated with Harvard University.
  

Time Commitment & Payment:

The time commitment for this position will cycle between two different periods: it will start with 90 days of full-time (35 hours/week) work, transition to 60 days of part-time (17.25 hours/week) work, and then continue this transition back and forth for the term of the position. 

Research assistants are paid $11.50 an hour. No other benefits are provided.

Start date: as soon as possible.

To Apply: 


Please send your current CV or resume and a cover letter summarizing your interest and experience to Sandra Cortesi at scortesi@cyber.law.harvard.edu with “Application for Youth and Media RA” in the subject line.