London School of Economics and Political Science
Similar to the US “Posters on the Hill”, the British Conference of Undergraduate Research hosted “Posters in Parliament” on February 20, 2018. One of the two chosen delegates from the LSE was Government student Hannah Bailey, who presented a paper using topic modelling to analyse both Mandarin and English versions of the Chinese People’s Daily, in order to assess the extent to which China talks to its citizens differently than how it talks to foreigners.
Independent undergraduate research in political science at the LSE is coordinated and led by the student initiative, The LSE Undergraduate Political Review(LSEUPR). LSEUPR's team of about 17 students has coordinated to publish its first full journal issue, featuring articles on Brexit, populist rhetoric by Trump and Sanders in the 2016 US election, the link between football and nationalism, and electoral geographies in the UK—and, employing advanced textual analysis, case study methodology, and advanced regression analysis.
The LSEUPR also hosts an annual conference which showcases the best undergraduate dissertations relating to politics from the previous year’s final dissertation projects. Aside from research-focused blogs, it also helps to steer undergraduates towards conducting (or at least engaging in) academic research, for example by publishing a “Beginners Guide to Undergraduate Research”. As a unique initiative in 2017-18, the LSEUPR further coordinated two student-led research teams (of about 5-6 students each) who, independently and in their own time, worked together to formulate, research, gather data, conduct analysis and draft a dissertation-length research paper. Both these teams will be presenting their papers at two different academic conferences—the PSE Undergraduate Research Conference and the British Conference of Undergraduate Research.