Community-Based Research Fellowship

Location: Local preferred, remote possible 

Faculty PI: Steven O. Roberts 

Project Description:

Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity is a unique center with a storied history; it was founded with the goal of bringing scholars of race together from across disciplines and interest areas. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis of race and ethnic studies programs across institutions of higher education to map the pedagogies, concepts, methods, policies, and populations that structure undergraduate education and faculty research in race and ethnic studies. The report will attempt to situate Stanford’s programs in broader national and transnational context, and will identify trends in how these programs have developed over time.

Undergraduate fellows will work closely with faculty and staff leadership at CCSRE to collect data from interviews, websites, and archives; analyze that data in quantitative and qualitative reports; and document these findings for internal and external audiences. The eventual goal of the project is to develop a comprehensive report and/or database that will become publicly accessible to other universities that have or are considering implementing ethnic studies programs. 

Fellowship description:

Exact parameters to be determined in consultation with the Faculty PI.

Preferred skills and experience:

• Data analysis
• Interviewing
• File organization
• Research and writing for a range of audiences

Location: Remote (in conversation with South African-based partners)

Faculty PI: Grant Parker

Project Description: 

The City of Cape Town is today one of Southern Africa’s major metropolitan areas: with just over 5 million inhabitants in the metro, it is second only to Johannesburg. By the time European settlement began (1652) the area had already been home to many thousands of years of human settlements, e.g. Peers Cave near Fish Hoek with its palaeolithic-era remains. More recent periods of Southern African history are legible in the cityscape, even after the economic hub moved inland with the discovery of diamonds and gold (1860s-80s). The connectivity afforded by Table Bay harbor has been a huge factor throughout the modern period, linking Southern Africa with both Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds.

Our task is to design a ‘Heritage Map’ that visualizes the richness of Capetonian pasts, from early colonial times to the present. This will highlight wide-ranging perspectives, including ‘other Cape Towns’ whose histories have gone unreported in the main accounts. We’ll make detailed and creative use of archival sources to create a complex but engaging map. Especially important is the impact of racial zoning in the 1960s-80s: to this end, we have unprecedented access to the official urban planning maps. We are proud to take on this project in partnership with public archives and heritage agencies, including the City of Cape Town. The intern will

• Compile structured datasets of places, events, land cases, and people from published scholarship, heritage inventories and archival sources, using spreadsheets;
• Assist in locating sites on modern and historical maps and creating basic GIS layers (points and simple polygons) in QGIS or similar software and check records in a web mapping platform, including short descriptive texts and references;
• Participate in testing and refining the map interface for clarity and historical accuracy.

The City of Cape Town (municipal government) is the partner for this project. To be precise, the Community, Arts and Culture Department, and the Environmental and Heritage Management Department.

Preferred skills and experience:

• Comfort with spreadsheets
• Interest in historical maps and (South) African history
• Willingness to learn or develop GIS skills. Experience with QGIS, ArcGIS, or simple web tools is an advantage but not essential.

Location: Remote or hybrid on Stanford campus

Faculty PIs: Anna Bigelow, Usha Iyer, Sharika Thiranagama, and Alexander Key

Project Description:

The "Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+" Faculty Research Network is designed to motivate sustained scholarly engagement with the question of the Palestinian present - in the context of broader currents and comparative moments in the Arab world.

The 2025-2026 Faculty Research Network (FRN) "Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+” aims build on the conversations in 2024-2025 and synthesize, integrate and clarify concepts germane to Palestinian identity and politics, Islam and the secular, race, history, and architecture. This network will pursue events and activities that seek to build capacity across Stanford communities (faculty, students, staff) on these concepts, promote a deliberative culture about these ideas and histories, and disseminate historical and contemporary debates and developments about these concepts. Winter and Spring 2025 activities will include work-in-progress discussions with Palestine Studies postdoctoral fellows Jad Kiadan and Suleiman Hodali, in addition to internal conversations on the state of the field, a visit by scholar Abdalla Bayyari, and collaborations with SHC, the Department of Anthropology, and the Center for South Asia.

Fellowship description:

Project to be determined in consultation with the Faculty PIs.

Preferred skills and experience:

• Proficiency in applicable languages
• Research and writing for a range of audiences

Location: Stanford (and East Palo Alto)

Faculty PI: Khalid Osman

Project Description:

The Osman Lab, in partnership with Nuestra Casa de East Palo Alto, is working to improve household water trust and health in East Palo Alto — a predominantly Latino and Black community in San Mateo County that has long faced environmental and affordability inequities despite its proximity to Silicon Valley. The project centers on distributing 100 Lifestraw pitcher filters with a full year of replacement filters, paired with bilingual community education and a research component. Nuestra Casa leads community outreach, workshops, tabling events, and one-on-one guidance to help families use and maintain their filtration systems.

The undergraduate fellow will analyze household survey data measuring changes in water use behavior, bottled water reliance, and trust in tap water, and will support the faculty PI and community partner in refining survey instruments for future rounds of data collection. The fellow will also contribute to bilingual outreach materials, assist with community engagement activities, and help document findings for both academic and community audiences. This project builds on a longstanding collaboration between the Osman Lab and Nuestra Casa rooted in Nuestra Casa's 2019 community needs assessment, which found that 75% of East Palo Alto respondents purchase bottled water due to distrust of their tap water.

Preferred Skills or Experience:

• Quantitative data analysis (experience with R, Python, Stata, or Excel a plus)
• Interest in environmental justice, water equity, or community-engaged research
• Comfort working directly with community members and partner organizations