Professor Charles Nesson and Fellow Judith Donath are seeking interns to work on a wide-ranging seminar and research program using freerice.org as a starting point.

Visitors to freerice.org can simultaneously build their vocabulary and contribute towards easing world hunger.  The site features multiple choice vocabulary questions – for each one you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program.  This seemingly simple site can be the basis for a number of interesting and difficult questions.  For example:

-          -  the contextual nature of boring/interesting: what makes doing drills here more compelling than in other settings, i.e. how does the fact that one is also contributing to a charity change one's motivations, perceptions of time and value? 

-          Is the small charitable contribution one makes here is counterproductive:does it give people the satisfaction of "having made a difference" without having done much?.  Or does  it raise awareness of the importance of giving in everyday life. 

-          Freerice redirects ad revenue to charity – is this generalizable?   What are some other models for supporting the information economy?

Our goal is to create a lively and productive dialog around these and related questions.  This dialog will be engaged both in person and on the net – using wikis, visualizations and other tools of discussion.

We are seeking both research interns to help formulate the questions and gather related material and technical interns to help create the web presence for this dialog.  We’re looking for people who are interested in these issues and have some of the following:

-          strong social science and/or humanities research experience

-          excellent writing skills

-          strong web development skills and/or

-          graphic design skills

To apply: Please send your c.v. and a cover letter explaining your relevant background and interests to Judith Donath - jdonath [AT] cyber.law.harvard.edu.