Summer 2026 FT Research Fellowship: "Gender Reforms in Education Systems Worldwide"

The King Center on Global Development's Summer Undergraduate Full-Time Research Assistant Program offers opportunities for fieldwork and research experience to matriculated, Stanford, undergraduates interested in global poverty and development across all academic disciplines.

When Stanford University travel policies allow, selected students spend up to 12 weeks in a low- or middle-income country conducting full-time research for a King Center faculty affiliate. Each research assistant receives a stipend of approximately $8,500 that covers most associated costs including travel, lodging, and incidental expenses.  Financial aid of up to $1,500 is also awarded to students who qualify.

Students are welcome to apply to multiple opportunities but must apply to each faculty research project separately.  Students may only accept one project if they are offered multiple opportunities.

If you have problems submitting your application, please report issues through the SOLO platform with a screenshot that includes the URL and the full page.  Please email kingcenter_programs@stanford.edu to also let us know of your issue(s). 

RESEARCH PROJECT SUMMARY:

Across the globe, education reforms are often promoted as tools for advancing gender equality. Yet strikingly, governments in some of the most women repressive societies adopt extensive education reforms that invoke gender rights. This project seeks to explain this phenomenon, while exploring how do governments around the world define “gender” and “gender rights” in reforms, and which particular dimensions do they prioritize or avoid, such as girls’ access to schooling, equality, workforce participation, or support for LGBTQ+ students. It will further explore under what political, social, or international conditions do these reforms translate into meaningful improvements in gender rights, and when do they remain largely symbolic. By examining education reforms as a window into how states navigate global development norms, domestic power, and gender inequality, research fellows will have an opportunity to learn about pressing policy debates.

The project is anchored in the World Education Reform Database (WERD), a unique global dataset documenting over 14,000 education reforms from 250 countries primarily spanning between 1960 and 2020. WERD captures the publicly stated goals of governments’ education reforms, allowing researchers to study how they frame social problems and solutions over time. Undergraduate Summer Research Fellows will play an active role in this work by assisting with data construction and cleaning as well as coding reforms on themes related to gender equality. Skill, time, and interest-permitting, research fellows may also support guided analyses to explore cross-national patterns, historical trends, and case studies. Fellows will gain hands-on experience in social science research, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and global development research.

Research mentor: Associate Professor Patricia Bromley

Dates: A minimum of ten weeks during summer quarter 2026.

WHAT YOU WILL DO: 

The research assistant will work closely together and in collaboration with the research team to:

• Skills permitting (we will provide training): code gender reforms, clean data, merge datasets, perform descriptive analyses, assist with literature reviews