Scholarships for master students
MOBILE Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law at the University of Copenhagen (Faculty of Law) is now accepting project proposals from full time master students who would like to write their thesis in collaboration with the center.
We are looking for 1-3 students with a desire to work on data from the Nordforsk funded project NordASIL as a preparation for or an integrated part of their master thesis. Ideally the scholarship period would cover the semester immediately prior to commencing the dissertation.
We expect the student(s) to publish a working paper in MOBILE’s Working Paper series as a continuation of the scholarship.
It is a requirement that the student(s) are enrolled and actively studying during the scholarship period.
About MOBILE
MOBILE was established in 2023 based on a grant from the Danish National Research Foundation. We are engaged in research on global mobility law understood as the legal regulation of migration, transnational workers, tourism, etc. with a particular focus on regional regimes of free movement in different parts of the world, the practical meaning of mobility rules, and how mobility rules change over time or as a result of external events. The research at MOBILE is mainly empirical legal in nature and integrates methods and theory from a range of different disciplines, including law, political science, sociology, anthropology, computer science and critical data studies.
The work in MOBILE takes place in a distinctly international environment with researchers from many different countries and backgrounds.
About NordASIL
Advancing Data Science in Migration Law (NordASIL) is a research project funded through a 15 million NOK grant by the Nordforsk Programme for Interdisciplinary Research. It’s key aim is to understand outcome variations in legal asylum decision-making through computational and interdisciplinary analysis of large datasets of asylum case files. The project is a partnership between the University of Oslo, the University of Uppsala and the University of Copenhagen. It comprises a highly interdisciplinary research team spanning law, computer science and social medicine and draws on unique asylum data from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. You can read more about the project and related work in the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab here.
What we offer
- Access to a unique dataset (after completion of an online GDPR course and signing an individual data management declaration), see below.
- Possibility to integrate unique data and researcher support into you master dissertation and subsequent publication possibilities.
- Monthly stipend (10,000 DKK) for duration of project employment (5 months), as well as continued affiliation to the research center during the ensuing master dissertation writing period.
- Shared work space and access to computer and software
- Mini roundtable with opportunity for feedback
- Supervision from one of MOBILE’s researchers
Dataset description
The primary dataset consists of 15,000+ text files containing written decisions and case summaries from the Danish Refugee Appeals Board (Flygtningenævnet) between 1995-2022. Note that the files are in Danish, so some level of understanding may be necessary to work with the dataset, depending on the project design.
The dataset has been pre-processed and contains unstructured data. Projects could implement computational methods ranging from descriptive statistics to sentiment analysis and topic modeling. Interdisciplinary project proposals inquiring into e.g. the psychological aspects of credibility assessments, bias detection or over time developments in legal interpretation are also highly encouraged.
As the work involves contact with highly confidential data, it is required to undergo training in the university's data management practices and to sign an individual data management declaration.
Application
Please send your CV and a project proposal (max 1.5 pages) including your topic of interest, motivation for the topic, the semester you would like to collaborate during, and why you would like to be a part of MOBILE (i.e., what you would like to collaborate on and with whom).
You are welcome to contact Assistant Professor William Hamilton Byrne (william.hamilton.byrne@jur.ku.dk) for more information about the NordASIL project and the dataset, and Center Coordinator Lin Solvang (liso@jur.ku.dk) for information about MOBILE and practical matters in relation to the scholarships.
Please send your application to liso@jur.ku.dk by June 20th, 2024.
(Disclaimer: For technical reasons, this subpage is tagged as "Law", but it is not a requirement to be a law student to receive the scholarship. We also invite students from other disciplines to apply.)