Research Assistant

Research assistance to conduct a literature review. In my recently published book Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the 21st Century (Cambridge 2023) I draw on my ethnographic research on Nigerian political practice to theorise the value of face-to-face politics and its' role in popular notions of good governance and accountability as accessibility. My future work will take forward this conceptual work on accessibility with the aim of making contributions to literatures beyond my immediate interlocutors in development studies and African politics, to wider political science literatures.  

The proposed research assistance will produce an initial mapping of key literatures on proximate themes. The main question will be: how have politics scholars studied face-to-face interactions between citizens and politicians / elected officials? In what ways have these practices been conceptualised in different bodies of scholarship?

Practically this will involve:

• Exploration of pre-selected literatures where there is already scholarship on face-to-face interactions between citizens and elected officials/politicians: linkage politics; constituency service and the literature on the Afrobarometer survey which includes a question about in-person visits to local representatives.  


• Searches based on more exploratory key words: “in-person politics”; “personal contact”, “face-to-face politics” (as time allows).  

The research assistant will conduct literature searches to compile a list of relevant readings. Once key readings are identified the assistant will read selectively, pulling out key quotes / definitions and summarising key readings.

The output will be an annotated bibliography using the Zotero shared library function. The work will be conducted over 5 days (35 hours) between 3rd-14th July. The hours can be spread flexibly over that time to fit around other commitments.

• Undergraduate and masters degree in social science discipline


• At least first year PhD

Essential:

• Experience carrying out literature reviews in politics, political sociology, or political anthropology. An ability to think about literatures the connections between different literatures across methods, theme, geographical region.


• Experience using referencing software of any kind (Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley)


• Experience of creating and maintaining systematic notes on literature (via any medium, Word, Zotero, Notion, pen and paper etc.)


• Familiarity with literature search tools: Google Scholar etc.

Desirable:

• Experience using Zotero


• Familiarity with literatures on: politics and the state in the global south; clientelism; ethnographies of politics, constituency service.


• Ability to think creatively about how conceptual debates connect to different literatures.