UROP Research Mentor Project Submission Portal: Submission #981

Research Mentor Information
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Primary Research Mentor Name: Martín Gandur
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Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated): mgandur@fsu.edu
Position Title: Graduate Student
Faculty Advisor Name: Amanda Driscoll
Faculty Advisor's FSU Email: adriscoll@fsu.edu
FSU College (if applicable): Social Sciences and Public Policy
FSU Department or Non-FSU Organization Affiliation: Department of Political Science
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Additional Research Mentor(s)
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Overall Project Details
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Title of the Project: "Public Reactions to Judicial Decisions around the World" and "Strategic Use of the Docket across Latin American Courts"
Project Keywords: courts, law, judicial behavior, public support for courts
Are you currently looking for research assistants?: No
Number of Research Assistants Needed : 2
Relevant Research Assistant Major(s):
Open to all majors

Project Location:: On FSU Main Campus
If the project location is off campus, does the research assistant(s) need to provide their own transportation?: {Empty}
Please select the choice that most accurately describes your expectations for the research assistant(s):: Partially Remote
Approximately how many hours a week would the research assistant(s) need to work?: 5-10
Roughly what time frame do you expect research assistant(s) to work?: Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Overall Research Project Description:
I have two projects.

Project 1: This project studies how citizens react to politically salient judicial decisions around the world. We will combine (1) yearly cross-national survey data from different sources, and (2) salient judicial rulings from courts around the world. Ideally, these data will allow us to explore survey items asking people about their attitudes about the judiciary to examine (1) overall trends, (2) whether citizens' attitudes about courts change after politically salient decisions, and (3) if there are differences between subgroups (for example, people that support the executive and those who support an opposition party).

Project 2: This project focuses on Latin American courts (primarily, Argentina's Supreme Court). Compared to the US Supreme Court, Latin American supreme courts usually deal with many more cases and have different procedures on how to decide these cases. This project will identify legally and politically salient cases decided or to be decided by these courts, starting with the Argentinian Supreme Court. Then, we will collect thorough information about each of these cases: the court's decision, the type of decision (fully decided, dismissed on procedural grounds, rejected certiorari, etc.), other relevant stages (orally arguments, public hearings, amicus briefs, etc.), the time the court took to hand down the decision, the parties and laws involved, and the internal case workflow within the court (among other things). Once we have these data, we will try to answer different questions that are related to strategic judicial decision-making: why some cases are dismissed at the court, why the court takes longer to hand down some decisions, why the court decided to hold public hearings or invite amicus to file briefs, and the strategic timing of the court's decision.

Research Tasks:
Data collection: identifying and downloading open-access surveys; collecting/scraping information about court cases (from official websites, existing databases, and media); 

Skills that research assistant(s) may need::
Spanish (required for project 2)
Some knowledge of R or similar statistical programming software (recommended)
Web scraping (recommended)

Mentoring Philosophy:
General mentoring philosophy: I take a collaborative, non-hierarchical (horizontal) approach when working with RAs. The aim is for both the Mentor and RAs to be equally invested in and excited about the projects in particular and social science research in general.
More about mentoring: I care that RAs get something useful from this experience. This can take different forms: learning about new topics, having some exposure to data-collection procedures, learning some basics of statistical programming, etc.
Tasks: I will teach and provide RAs with all the resources they need to complete the tasks of the project. I will work alongside RAs on may of these tasks. We will create a handbook as we progress with the data collection and coding so that we keep track of what you have been doing (and improve procedures).
Goals: We will set multiple feasible goals to keep track of our progress. I will make sure that these goals are clear, but this doesn't mean they will be fixed. We will adjust our goals based on our progress.
Meetings: We will plan to meet weekly or bi-weekly (in person or remotely).
Workload expectations: I don't know how long it will take to complete each tasks. There are no a priori expectations about how fast RAs should progress. We will learn all this as we work on the project. You will never be asked to work more hours than stipulated.

Please provide a link to your publications, a video clip, or a website for your research project (if applicable):: https://martingandur.com/
Please add any additional information here (if applicable)::
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Are you interested in participating in the UROP Research Mentor Roundtable?: No
Roundtable times and Zoom links:
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UROP Program Elements
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Mentor Handbook, FAQs, and Communication: Yes
UROP Performance Evaluation: Yes
Materials Grant: Yes
UROP Poster Presentation: Yes
Faculty Advisor Confirmation: Yes

Are you interested in attending in a UROP Research Mentor Workshop Series?: No
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Year: 2024
update url: https://cre.fsu.edu/urop-research-mentor-project-submission-portal?token=_X4CaKR7M4a6SHgsIVVjjaQ_3F2Z7iLo43NrwYkHt3w