Research Assistantship with the Bill Lane Center: Understanding the design of participatory mechanisms in international river basin organizations

Overview

This research project involves developing a qualitative database of international river basin organizations and their institutional rules to understand how these influence transboundary water quality management. The project involves data collection via online research and interviews regarding the participatory mechanisms and water quality outcomes in approximately 200 international river basin organizations, and the qualitative coding of these data to understand key trends. This research includes several international river basins in the American West, including the Colorado and Tijuana River basins, and is intended to provide a comparative basis to inform institutional design and management strategies for these and other international river basins in western North America.

This part-time role (up to 20 hours/week) offers an excellent opportunity to learn about environmental governance in the context of water management, and to gain experience in qualitative data collection and analysis. You will receive mentorship from Gemma Smith, PhD candidate in the EIPER Program.

Key Roles

• Assist in data collection, including gathering data from international river basin organization websites, and emailing and interviewing staff and stakeholders in these organizations, located around the world;
• Conduct detailed qualitative coding of data collected (you will receive training in this coding process);
• Assist in the visualization and analysis of the coding results to identify key trends;
• Conduct data analysis on qualitative and quantitative data collected;
• Develop ways to visualize the data collected; and
• Develop and deliver a presentation at the end of the summer or beginning of Fall 2022 to share your work with the Bill Lane Center community.

Qualifications

• Interest in environmental governance, especially water management in international contexts
• Past experience with qualitative or quantitative data analysis and visualization, and/ or GIS, preferred but not required
• Strong attention to detail
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work independently as well as part of a team
• Additional language skills an advantage, but not required

In addition to this pre-arranged opportunity, the Bill Lane Center is also seeking students to contribute to its on-going research priorities. Learn more/apply here (you may apply to multiple opportunities): https://solo.stanford.edu/opportunities/summer-research-assistantships-bill-lane-center-american-west