Grattan Research Internship Programme
The School of Social Sciences and Philosophy is delighted to announce the launch of the inaugural Grattan Research Internship Programme.
About the Programme
This Programme will offer undergraduate students the opportunity to work as paid Research Assistants alongside College faculty on Departmental projects over the summer. The Programme has been made available through the generosity of School and Departmental donors with the assistance of Trinity Development & Alumni. Each Department will designate one or two projects and appoint one or two interns. The projects will be coordinated at Department level by a designated project coordinator (or coordinators). The internship(s) will be available to undergraduate students entering their Senior Sophister year. The intern(s) will be expected to work 30 hours per week over a six-week period (for one intern) or a three-week period (for two interns). The intern(s) will receive a paid stipend of €500/week.
Available Projects for the Department of Political Science
1. Accent Representation in the UK Parliament
Project Coordinator: Dr Asli Ceren Cinar
Email address: CINARA@tcd.ier
Politicians signal representation to their constituents not only through what they say, but also through how they say it. In particular, the use of accents can serve as a meaningful representational cue, conveying both regional identity and social class affiliation. Yet, despite its potential importance, we lack systematic evidence on whether and under what conditions politicians use accents in their political communication. This project examines whether the accents of Members of Parliament have changed over time by looking at the diversity of regional accents represented in Westminster. Specifically, it investigates whether elected politicians distance themselves from Received Pronunciation (RP) by sending an accent-based class or regional identity signal to their constituents. To address measurement challenges that have limited prior research in this area, we employ computational audio analysis techniques and apply them to recordings of parliamentary speeches. This approach enables systematic sociolinguistic analysis of spoken language in Parliament and allows us to trace longitudinal changes in politicians’ vocal patterns.
The research focuses on the following questions:
- Have MPs moved away from RP over time, and if so, when?
- Do we observe greater diversity in accent representation in Parliament over time?
- What mechanisms drive accent change among politicians?
- Do politicians strategically vary their accent depending on the topic being discussed?
- Collecting data via obtaining audio/video of parliamentary speeches from Parliament Live TV, matching and downloading the relevant transcripts from Hansard, and getting biographical information about MPs (party, gender, social background, and constituency) from the UK Parliament website.
- Organizing and structuring the collected materials into a consistent dataset.
- Coding speech samples according to a detailed codebook provided by the project coordinator, identifying features such as accent markers, speech context, and speaker metadata.
2. Video Hearings and Judicial Legitimacy: How Do Remote Proceedings Relate to Public Perceptions of Courts?
Project Coordinator: Dr Jeffrey Ziegler
Email address: ZIEGLERJ@tcd.ie
The digital transformation of justice systems, most visibly with the spread of remote video hearings, raises questions about how court legitimacy is shaped by individuals’ interactions with legal institutions through new technologies. To shed light on this evolving trend, this project examines how the introduction of remote judicial proceedings is related with citizens’ perceptions of courts. Specifically, the project draws on cross-country survey data pertaining to institutional trust and experience dealing with the legal system, combined with comparative indicators of digitalization within national judiciaries, to show whether the visibility, immediacy, and perceived accessibility enabled by video hearings enhances the symbolic authority of legal institutions. The project contributes to contemporary debates on the politics of judicial legitimacy and technological governance, illuminating whether courts’ legitimacy in the digital age depends not only on legal outcomes, but also on evolving expectations of how justice is carried out.
During the internship, the successful candidate will support three interrelated tasks:
- Assist with basic coding or classification of institutional features related to remote hearings, court digitalization, or procedural reform, using pre-defined criteria supplied by the project coordinator.
- Check data consistency, documenting sources, and maintaining clear records of coding decisions and dataset construction.
- Help to compile survey data on institutional trust, legal-system experience, and related attitudes toward courts.
How to Apply
Interested students should submit an application including:
- A 500-word statement of academic background, research interests, and relevant skills, indicating which project they are applying for and why.
- A current academic transcript (or permission for the project coordinator to access their academic record).