Research Assistant Position for Prof. William Schultz

Opportunity Description:

I am currently researching a book project titled The Wages of Sin: Faith, Fraud, and Religious Freedom in Modern America. This project examines how the interplay between religious entrepreneurs, government regulators, and small donors has shaped the concept of religious freedom in the twentieth-century United States. 

The primary work of the research assistant will be 1) assessing the development of charitable regulation on the state level 2) determining what safeguards major religious denominations have put in place to prevent financial fraud. Tasks will include finding relevant material on electronic databases like HeinOnline; contacting state archives to request the legislative history of charitable fundraising regulation; and finding, reading, and preparing executive summaries of important stories from periodicals like Nonprofit Policy Forum, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the Church Law & Tax Report. 

There are no hard-and-fast requirements for research assistants, but applicants should be interested in the intersection of religion, law, and politics in the United States; be comfortable with using Excel to create databases; and have some familiarity with using electronic databases like ProQuest, HeinOnline, and Bloomberg Law.

Application Process: 

Application Form