About
SHPRS’ Undergraduate Research Experience places undergraduate students into research assistant opportunities working with individual faculty members on their research projects. Students will enroll in HST/ PHI/ REL 494: Undergraduate Research Experience* and may earn up to 9 hours of elective credits (and in some cases, apply them towards their major). All students in good academic standing are invited to apply (minimum GPA 2.0).
Undergraduate research opportunities will be added as they become available. Please check back regularly for new opportunities.
* As with any course at ASU that earns credit, regular tuition charges apply.
**Undergraduate Research Experience can only count as elective credit within the major and cannot substitute for required courses. If you have already fulfilled all of your major electives, the course will only count as general elective credit. If your major is not in SHPRS, please consult with your major advisor.
Applications for Spring 2026 are due October 17, 2025.
Benefits of the program
- First-hand experience of professional research
- Learn applicable research skills
- Invest invaluable relationships with faculty
Program highlights
As a research assistant, you will:
- Work with SHPRS faculty supporting his or her research
- Earn credit commensurate with the number of hours of work (determined in advance and detailed in the URE contract)
- Learn applicable research skills
- Strengthen your resume and grad school application
Steps to apply
1. Review the URE opportunities available and determine which one(s) interest you.
2. Submit your application. You can apply to one research opportunity. Faculty leading the project may request a follow-up interview.
3. Receive an email announcing selected applicants and next steps. Once you’re in the door make the best of the opportunity…learn what you came to learn, get your questions answered, make a connection that lasts a lifetime.
Questions? Email [email protected].
Opportunities
Fall 2025 Opportunities
Tempe/Online
The Settler Fishes of the Southern Hemisphere: Image Searches
Associate Professor Tobias Harper, History
This research experience is in support of a book project that investigates the connections (and more often the disconnections) between economic growth and well-being outcomes from 1975 to the present. This project requires interdisciplinary research that tracks how several fields (economics, psychology, history, well-being studies) understand what well-being is and the factors that cause it to rise and fall. The proposed argument is that economic growth used to be closely correlated in the past, but since 1975, this has no longer been the case. Those in America and the global North have been growing much richer, but not much happier, and they have been harming their communities and environments in the process.
Public History Research Experience
Erin Craft, History
Public History is history that engages the community in building connections to their pasts and each other. For this research experience, students will work with the Public History coordinator and various faculty on a variety of ongoing Public History projects. Projects will include curating Salt River Stories and Global World War II Monuments through editing, research, and writing interpretive text. Additional project work may include developing and curating digital archives, such as our past project Journal of a Plague Year: An Archive of Covid-19, conducting “history harvests” with local partners such as the City of Phoenix, or conducting and processing oral histories.
Consciousness and AI
Associate Teaching Professor Jeffrey Watson, Philosophy
The purpose of this project is to research very recent (last 4 years) publications in philosophy related to Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence, to understand whether and how the success of LLMs and Generative AI require us to shift old debates about the nature of conscious experience, including reconsidering the plausibility of reductionism, functionalism, emergentism, and panpsychism, and considering adjacent topics like the nature of representation and compatibilism about free will. The output of this research will be an updated curriculum for a Philosophy of Mind course and a Consciousness course.
The Professions of Russian Repatriates from Shanghai in 1947
Associate Professor Laurie Manchester, History
This research experience is in support of a book project on Russian repatriates from China to the USSR. It has been argued that the poorest and least educated voluntarily repatriated. The project the student research assistant will be working on requires fluency in the Russian language. The student will work with a complete list, scanned from the Russian archives, of the 6047 Russian emigres who voluntarily repatriated from Shanghai in 1947. The list includes various data, including professions of all who repatriated. The students will compile a table dividing the repatriates into categories such as professional white collar workers, manual laborer, housewife, unemployed, retired or student.
Analyzing Cultural Change through ASU International Programs
Associate Teaching Professor Jamie Edmonds, History
Utilizing qualitative and quantitative data from an initial pilot study from May 2025 - January 2026, this project will analyze this data in order to better understand how participants in a Critical Languages Institute program change as a result of their domestic and/or international study
Tempe
Local Museums: Archives & Collections Research Experience
Erin Craft, History
The collections at the Arizona Historical Society (AHS), Tempe History Museum, and the Arizona Jewish Historical Society broadly represent Arizona History and are invaluable to researchers of various disciplines and the public. Students will work with Senior Program Coordinator Erin Craft and Professor Mark Tebeau, as well as the archivists, collections manager and librarians at one or more of the three museum locations, to engage in hands-on work surrounding digital and physical collections and archive management. Tasks might include item evaluation, collection management, exhibit design, or research, and will be designed to meet student’s skills and interests as much as possible.