To showcase the breadth and scope of the Faculty Aide program, here are some examples of recent research projects.
The Faculty Aide helped to research a project examining the financial viability of a CBS/Viacom merger by analyzing the history of a past merger between companies, assembling and analyzing financial market stock price data, and incorporating theoretical frameworks about the recent media industry restructuring into the work.
The research was conducted for the Scientific Director of the Harvard Lab for Entrepreneurship and Development (LEAD).
Faculty:
Bruno Sergi, Spring 2019
The Faculty Aide helped to research a book project for a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian initiative.
The Faculty Aide assisted in researching the literature on empathy and related subjects, as well as current museum-based empathy programs.
Faculty:
Birthe Anders, Spring 2019
How might encounters with works of art in a museum be an opportunity to meaningfully engage with difficult issues surrounding pain and suffering?
A project based at the Harvard Art Museums, sought to interrogate what we mean by “empathy” in the museum context and thinking critically about how pain and suffering in art can be an integral part of larger discussions of embodiment, personhood, and social justice.
The Faculty Aide assisted in researching the literature on empathy and related subjects, as well as current museum-based empathy programs.
Faculty:
David Odo, Spring 2018
A Faculty Aide student helped a Los Angeles Times senior sports photojournalist who was completing a Nieman Foundation Fellowship to analyze media coverage of gender in U.S. sports.
This was done via an analysis of the adjectives used to talk about female athletes in major circulation print media and compare them to those used to describe their male counterparts. In addition, a tally was performed to compile the instances in which physical attributes (hair, clothing) and emotional attributes are used as descriptors in sports reporting.
Faculty:
Sammy Jo Hester, Spring 2022
The Faculty Aide helped to investigate the relationship between the main mycobacterium tuberculosis lineages and transmission and progression to active tuberculosis (TB) disease with a longitudinal epidemiological logical study based in Lima, Peru.
The Aide also participated in regular group seminars held within the department of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Faculty:
Megan Murray, Spring 2018
The Faculty Aide helped contribute to the research a tenured Harvard Professor of Literature and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations performed to examine the intersections of environmental devastation and its impacts on mental and behavioral health.
The project seeks to engage with how the effects of climate change are linked to issues of environmental, climate, and other forms of justice, and how these issues are reflected in media portrayals.
Faculty:
Karen Thornber, Fall 2022