Hire a Rice Grad Student
These Rice students are currently seeking employment:
AMERICAN POLITICS:
Christy Aroopala
(Ph.D. 2009) Curriculum Vitae
Website: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~caa24/
Christy is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale University Center for the Study of American Politics and a Lecturer for the Political Science Department at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include political behavior, political psychology, campaigns & elections, the policy process, political institutions, social identity, race & ethnicity, and research methods such as quantitative methods, experimental methodology, and survey methodology. Christy’s dissertation, "Mobilizing Collective Identities: Frames & Rational Individuals," explores how and when group mobilization efforts are successful, and is funded by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. She takes a micro approach by exploring the specific ways that varying rhetorical strategies enhance the likelihood of successful mobilization. Specifically, she combines rational choice and psychological theories to generate hypotheses concerning the role of thresholds (rules that determine how far the group is from its goal), the stakes involved in the decision, and source credibility in moderating the success of frames in increasing group participation. These predictions are tested in a series of three experiments -- a voting game laboratory experiment, a public goods laboratory experiment, and a mobilization survey-experiment. Christy finds evidence that group-based mobilization is most successful when moderators reinforce the mobilization messages, suggesting that identity-based politics have a greater underlying rational (i.e., instrumental) component than previously thought. The findings of this project have significant implications for the role of mobilization and identity in politics.
Dissertation Committee: James N. Druckman (Northwestern University, Co-Chair),
John R. Alford (Co-Chair), Robert M. Stein, Randy Stevenson, Michelle Hebl (Psychology)
Andrew Spiegelman
(Ph.D. Expected 2010) Curriculum Vitae
Website: http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~ams5460/
Andrew’s
interests involve American legislatures in comparative perspective and
statistical research methods. His dissertation explores why state
legislatures are not as uniformly cartelized as national legislatures.
Specifically, why are majority parties rolled more often in subnational
chambers than national ones? First, the dissertation explores what kinds of
legislative institutions contribute to majority roll rates and finds
that legislative professionalism (i.e. the total amount of resources
allocated to individual legislators) is among the most important. Second, he examines the value of measuring cartelization with majority
roll rates and shows that, in many
cases, this common measure does not actually measure cartelization. Third, the project delves into what district-level factors will make
it more or less likely for a legislature to be cartelized, finding that an important factor is the importance of political parties in the
district. Among the main conclusions for the field of legislative studies, the project's findings suggest that political scientists interested in determining what leads to
legislative cartelization should study subnational legislatures
due to the lack of variation in cartelization at the national level.
Dissertation committee: Randy Stevenson (Chair), Keith Hamm, Lanny Martin, Ron Soligo (Economics)
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:
Victor Marin
(Ph.D. Expected 2009) Curriculum Vitae
Victor’s research and teaching interests involve the quantitative study of international conflict, conflict processes, American foreign policy, and comparative politics (institutions). His dissertation project examines the relationship between mutual military buildups (arms races) and the onset of international conflict. Research on arms races by the scientific community of conflict scholars has been inconclusive and has slowed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. Specifically, many studies have failed to develop strong theoretical linkages between arms racing and conflict and the empirical results borne out by these studies are inconsistent. In this dissertation I frame arms races as dangerous events in the global arena and develop a clear theoretical account of the international system, the incentives for arming, and the linkage between arms racing and international conflict. The central theoretical argument suggests arms races lead states into conflict with one another. I test my expectations through a regional analysis of minor powers from three geographic areas: Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East over the period 1970-2000 using the actual weapons stockpiles of states. The empirical results not only shed insight into the likelihood observing international conflict when preceded by arms racing but also indicate whether certain types of arms racing - air as opposed to sea or ground racing, for example - may be more likely to develop into conflict than other forms.
Dissertation Committee: Richard Stoll (Chair), Cliff Morgan, Bill Reed, and Devika Subramanian (Computer Science)