2 positions Student assistant (m/f/d) 41 h/month limited to 2 years reference code: JFKI_StudentRA_PubSav_2026_en

John F. Kennedy Institut, Sociology Department

The sociology department at the John F. Kennedy Institute teaches and studies the political economy of the United States in comparative and historical perspective combining data-driven computational approaches with informed institutional analyses of capitalism, insurance finance, housing and welfare states while drawing on theories from Comparative Political Economy, historical and economic sociology.

Job Description

• Assist the instructors of the sociology department in the DFG-funded research on the comparative history of public banking, especially in researching and obtaining literature for research purposes, data collection, maintenance and analysis.
• The student will be expected to contribute in locating, collecting, harmonizing, and systematizing historical data from primary sources of various countries and cities, in analyzing data using statistical software and in writing texts.
  
  

Desirable

• Familiarity with working with quantitative data and ideally historical data sources
• Knowledge of descriptive statistics and statistical software (e.g. R, stata, Python)
• Interest in economic sociology and political economy
• Knowledge of more than one European language next to English (C2) (French in particular) is an advantage (B1)
• German language skills (B1) are an advantage
• BA or MA students in North American Studies (with an interest in sociology), BA/MA students in sociology, data science or related social sciences (esp. economics, history).
• Please send 1) motivation letter, 2) CV, 3) transcripts, and 4) writing sample (term paper, essay or thesis), preferably in one pdf.