Summer Internship Positions Geary Institute

Just a reminder that there will be a small number of summer internship positions in the Geary Institute this summer, from late June onwards. March 31st is cut off point for receipt of CVs.


Candidates will receive 200 euro weekly stipend for the internship, which will last approximately 8 weeks, and will participate fully in the research activity of the Institute. The Institute has housed many talented students and researchers over the last decade and this is a good opportunity to gain valuable paid experience in a busy research environment. Successful candidates will be fully trained in key research areas and will be given wide scope to develop their own research interests through interaction with Institute staff. Candidates must be registered for a full or part-time recognised academic programme. Due to current restrictions on the issuing of work permits for Ireland, and the associated costs, available positions are only available to candidates legally entitled to take up paid employment in Ireland


Candidates ideally will be undergraduate or Masters students working in psychology, economics or cognate areas. We will give strong preference to candidates (i) with very high grades (ii) strong quantitative skills (iii) strong intrinsic interest in research (iv) strong desire to gain relevant research experience (v) specific interests in behavioural economics. Candidates should send a CV and cover letter outlining how you might benefit from being here to Emma.Barron@ucd.ie before March 31st 2011. Candidates who have already submitted a CV and cover letter to the general intern programme will be considered but you should feel free to resubmit your CV if it has been updated. We will let people know in the first week of April. We regret that limited funding means we cannot help in any way with relocation or accommodation costs.


Projects will include, but are not limited to: helping to design experiments to test the effect of the automatic enrollment provision in the new pension framework on overall participation; assisting in the building of a historical health database to pinpoint key drivers of 20th century Irish mortality rates (see key paper here); designing surveys to examine the economic determinants of well-being (see example of this work here); designing experiments to ascertain how people interpret economic quantities (see example of this work here).

The University


University College Dublin is a large and diverse university whose origin dates back to 1854. There are over 20,000 students based in five colleges. The University strives to achieve the highest standards in the advancement of knowledge through research and scholarly publications. It communicates that knowledge to successive generations of students through excellence in teaching. The University also makes an active contribution to the interests and development of the wider community - regional, national and international. The university is situated on a large modern campus about 4km to the south of the centre of Dublin. Further information on the University is available at www.ucd.ie .

The Geary Institute

The Geary Institute (formerly the Institute for the Study of Social Change) was established at University College Dublin in 1999 as a centre for political, economic and sociological research. The activity of the Institute is organised around research programmes involving researchers from the Schools of Economics, Politics and International Relations, Law, Public Health and Population Science from throughout the University, from other research groups in Ireland, and key strategic partnerships throughout Europe and the US. The Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA) is also part of the Institute, an invaluable resource for the social science community in Ireland. The Institute is housed within a new building on the Belfield campus which provides up to date facilities for graduate students, staff and research visitors, as well as a seminar room, library, boardroom and common room. The Institute is directed by Professor Colm Harmon and the Institute Manager is Susan Butler. See www.ucd.ie/geary for more information.

Paid Summer Research Internships UCD Geary Institute

Summer Internships UCD Geary Institute:

5 Summer Internships are available in the UCD Geary Institute working in the behavioural research stream and reporting to Colm Harmon and Liam Delaney. Candidates will receive a 1,600 euro stipend for the internship, which will last approximately 8 weeks, and will participate fully in the research activity of the Institute.  The Institute has housed many talented students and researchers over the last decade and this is a very strong opportunity to gain valuable paid experience in a top-class research environment. Successful candidates will be fully trained in key research areas and will be given wide scope to develop their own research interests through interaction with Institute staff. Candidates must be registered for a full or part-time recognised academic programme. 

Candidates ideally will be undergraduate or Masters students working in psychology, economics or cognate areas. We will give strong preference to candidates (i) with very high grades (ii) strong quantitative skills (iii) strong intrinsic interest in research (iv) strong desire to gain relevant research experience. Candidates should send a CV and cover letter outlining how you might benefit from this programme to Emma.Barron@ucd.ie before May 20th 2010. Candidates who have already submitted a CV and cover letter to the general intern programme will be considered but you should feel free to resubmit your CV if it has been updated.

Successful candidates will participate in research across a number of projects, including but not necessarily limited to those below.

1. National Pensions Framework: At least one candidate will work with a number of Geary researchers on a scoping study to examine the changes in the national pension framework. This will involve examining consumption and savings in Ireland from the perspective of behavioural economics.

2. Health and History in Ireland: One candidate will work on a large study of historical health conditions in 20th century Ireland. This work follows up a recent paper and set of theses. The paper below gives an example of the type of research being conducted in this stream.

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp200943.pdf

3. Measurement of complex preference parameters. This work is a collaboration between colleagues in economics, psychology and medicine. This research examines how to measure very complex subjective economic phenomena such as time preferences and utility. Some recent working papers illustrate the basic ideas.

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp200901.pdf

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp200819.pdf

4. Behavioural Economics and Public Policy. One candidate will assist in the development of the ongoing teaching and research programme in behavioural economics and public policy. Full details below.

http://geary.ucd.ie/econpsych

5. Well-Being and Public Policy: One candidate will work on the ongoing research into Economics and Well-Being, part-funded by IRCHSS. Full details below.

http://geary.ucd.ie/wellbeing


Organisational Environment


The University

University College Dublin is a large and diverse university whose origin dates back to 1854. There are over 20,000 students based in five colleges. The University strives to achieve the highest standards in the advancement of knowledge through research and scholarly publications. It communicates that knowledge to successive generations of students through excellence in teaching. The University also makes an active contribution to the interests and development of the wider community - regional, national and international. The university is situated on a large modern campus about 4km to the south of the centre of Dublin. Further information on the University is available at www.ucd.ie .


The Geary Institute

The Geary Institute (formerly the Institute for the Study of Social Change) was established at University College Dublin in 1999 as a centre for political, economic and sociological research. The activity of the Institute is organised around research programmes involving researchers from the Schools of Economics, Politics and International Relations, Law, Public Health and Population Science from throughout the University, from other research groups in Ireland, and key strategic partnerships throughout Europe and the US. The Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA) is also part of the Institute, an invaluable resource for the social science community in Ireland. The Institute is housed within a new building on the Belfield campus which provides up to date facilities for graduate students, staff and research visitors, as well as a seminar room, library, boardroom and common room. The Institute is directed by Professor Colm Harmon and the Institute Manager is Susan Butler. See www.ucd.ie/geary  for more information.


Informal Inquiries only to:

Liam Delaney

Telephone number: 716 4631

Email: Liam.Delaney@ucd.ie