Harvard University Pre-Doctoral Fellowships 2026: Apply Now for Fully Funded Research Roles at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

The Embedded Development Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) is hiring two full-time Pre-doctoral Fellows. The first to begin in January 2026, the second to begin round July 2026, every for an preliminary 12 month interval with chance of extension. Founded in 2025, the Embedded Development Lab makes use of the instruments of economics to study paths of improvement which might be championed by the particular individuals embedded in the locations the place they dwell. Our present analysis goals to increase and scale instructional approaches that empower communities to turn out to be brokers of their very own improvement, with a present deal with trainer skilled improvement in sub-Saharan Africa (and past). The “Learning to Learn” framework at the coronary heart of this work envisions an academic course of by means of which populations leverage scientific rules to hold out extra cautious observations, descriptions and analyses of their very own communities. We discover whether or not this functionality, then, helps professionals (akin to lecturers) and their communities articulate, and advance alongside, a clearer path of improvement tied to their place. The Lab works with a number of companions who introduce this method to schooling by means of faculties, trainer skilled improvement, agriculture schooling, and extra.

Fellows will likely be based mostly at HGSE underneath the path of Professor Vesall Nourani. This place provides important alternatives for journey, usually requiring prolonged stays in low- and middle-income communities to assist on-the-ground analysis actions. Fellows will work carefully with massive, multidisciplinary analysis groups and tackle key tasks in managing the information assortment course of, together with designing surveys, analyzing literature on measurement practices, overseeing information cleansing workflows, and coaching and supervising enumerators in the discipline. Additional duties embrace leveraging econometrics to investigate massive datasets, drafting literature critiques, creating shows, and enhancing analysis papers. This fellowship is designed as an immersive bridge previous to graduate faculty or business analysis roles, offering hands-on preparation for these enthusiastic about empirical improvement and schooling economics.

We encourage purposes from all ranges of technical analysis expertise or material data. As a corporation targeted on financial improvement by means of schooling, we welcome purposes from individuals with different backgrounds and views. We attempt to create a piece atmosphere the place our employees are aligned on mission and the broader objective underlying any undertaking. This permits the perspective and experiences of every employees member to reinforce our undertaking actions by means of the distinctive and contemporary insights they supply to the issues we try to unravel.

Applicants ought to have accomplished a bachelor’s diploma or grasp’s diploma, have robust quantitative expertise, and expertise with empirical analysis strategies. Candidates with analysis expertise are strongly most popular, particularly these with programming expertise in Stata, R, and/or Python. Candidates needn’t be Economics majors or diploma holders, although they need to have a powerful curiosity in and a few expertise with Economics. Successful candidates have come from a spread of backgrounds (together with from undergraduate and graduate packages, business jobs, and different analysis assistant positions), and have a spread of talent ranges and expertise with coding. Experience residing and dealing in a low- or middle-income nation, particularly in a capability the place one contributed to information assortment workflows in faculties, is valued.

 

The Pre-doctoral Fellow will play a key position in supporting analysis tasks associated to randomized managed trials of trainer coaching interventions (in Uganda, with Kimanya Ngeyo Foundation) and long-term instructional program evaluations (akin to FUNDAEC’s SAT program in Colombia). This place is integral to organizing, cleansing, and analyzing complicated datasets, in addition to supporting analysis actions and proposal improvement. The Fellow will contribute actively to analysis output and assist handle analysis assistants as wanted.

Responsibilities

Data Management & Analysis:

●      Organize, clear, and keep large-scale datasets, and help with new, complicated information assortment spanning a number of items of statement and time durations.

●      Support information integration/merging throughout tasks and years.

●      Prepare datasets for analysis use, together with preliminary information analyses (abstract statistics, visualizations, and so on.).

●      Carry out superior statistical analyses to assist analysis objectives.

●      Create and keep information dictionaries and guarantee correct documentation to facilitate staff entry and understanding.

●      Ensure compliance with information safety and moral requirements, notably when dealing with delicate information from creating areas.

●      Think thoughtfully and creatively about information to develop new and revolutionary strategies for information assortment, administration, and evaluation.

Research & Project Collaboration:

●      Support analysis design, proposal writing, manuscript improvement, and the creation of shows.

●      Participate in ongoing and new analysis actions associated to each Ugandan and Colombian schooling interventions.

●      Engage in all required instructing, school, and committee actions in-person and as wanted by the school sponsor.

Survey Programming:

●      Program and digitize surveys utilizing an ODK-based information assortment platform, making certain correct information seize and integration with present information techniques.

●      Design and implement (high-frequency) sanity checks to watch information high quality and establish errors promptly.

Collaboration and Communication:

●      Work carefully with researchers, offering data-related assist and experience.

●      Communicate successfully with companions and stakeholders based mostly in creating international locations to know their information wants, present information techniques, and facilitate analysis collaborations.

●      Provide coaching and assist to staff members and native companions on information administration practices and instruments.

This position is predicated in Cambridge, MA, with as much as six months worldwide journey to undertaking websites as wanted.