Research Project Manager: Cultural Narratives, Economic Games, & Decision-making
How does the meaning people assign to fairness, cooperation, trust, and reciprocity shape the choices they make? This international project examines whether cultural narratives of the choices we make help explain and predict decision-making beyond standard economic and psychological models. Working with Professor Igor Grossmann (University of Waterloo) and co-investigators Cendri Hutcherson (University of Toronto) and Samuel Johnson (Waterloo), and drawing on the network of the Wise Judgment Consortium, the project will build one of the largest and most linguistically diverse datasets ever assembled on representation (or “construal”) of canonical economic games and social dilemmas across societies, distributed across 12+ countries.
Projects at this scale succeed or fail on coordination. We are looking for someone who can turn scientific plans into coordinated, launch-ready studies across countries, languages, institutions, and recruitment platforms.
Key responsibilities include:
• Own the master project plan across 12+ sites: maintain timelines, milestones, dependencies, decision logs, and action items; anticipate bottlenecks and flag slippage early with proposed solutions.
• Serve as the primary coordination point between the PI, co-investigators, and international site leads: prepare meetings, track decisions and action items, follow up on deliverables, and maintain clear documentation of site-specific issues and adaptations.
• Prepare and shepherd research ethics submissions at Waterloo and coordinate partner-institution approvals across jurisdictions.
• Develop, pilot, and adapt study materials with the investigator team, including instrument drafting, survey platform programming, translation/back-translation, cognitive interviews, and version control across multiple languages; ensure that local adaptations remain consistent with the shared research protocol.
• Coordinate online and in-person recruitment; monitor enrollment, sample composition, data quality, participant compensation, expenditures, and vendor performance against project targets.
• Coordinate the project's open-science and research-documentation pipeline: OSF pre-registrations and repositories, codebooks, metadata, and secure storage protocols.
• Work closely with postdocs and graduate students on study design and implementation; recruit, train, and coordinate undergraduate research assistants working on project-specific tasks.
This is a hands-on research role, and not an administrative position. The Project Manager will be the operational driver of study development and implementation: drafting and programming materials, coordinating pilots, solving implementation problems, and ensuring that decisions are translated into functioning protocols across sites.
Employment details:
• Appointment: Approximately 24 hours/week (0.7 FTE), initially for 12 months, renewable annually through the life of the grant, subject to funding and performance.
• Compensation: $25–30/hour, depending on experience and qualifications.
• Location: Based at the University of Waterloo; hybrid work is possible, with periodic on-campus meetings.
• Schedule: Hours are flexible and can be concentrated into three or four days, but will need to overlap periodically with partners in European, African, and Asian time zones. Most work will occur during normal Eastern Time working hours.
• Start date: Fall 2026, with some flexibility.
Required Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in psychology, cognitive science, behavioural economics, sociology, or a related quantitative or social-science field.
• Hands-on experience developing and running behavioural or survey studies (incl. materials development, survey programming, piloting, recruitment, or data-quality monitoring).
• Evidence of exceptional organization and follow-through in managing multiple concurrent research or professional workstreams, deadlines, and collaborators. Ability to identify emerging problems, propose practical solutions, and follow issues through to resolution with limited supervision.
• Excellent written English and the ability to communicate clearly, tactfully, and efficiently with collaborators across cultural and institutional contexts.
• Experience with Qualtrics or comparable survey software and comfort working with structured research files, naming conventions, version control, and reproducible documentation.
• Exceptional attention to detail combined with the judgment to distinguish urgent problems from minor imperfections.
Assets:
• Research ethics/REB submission experience.
• Experience with multilingual or cross-cultural research.
• Working knowledge of a language represented among consortium sites.
• Experience with online participant platforms such as Prolific, CloudResearch, Besample, or Credamo.
• Experience coordinating or supervising undergraduate researchers.
• Working knowledge of R or Python.
• Experience working with qualitative, mixed-method, or narrative/text data.
We do not expect one candidate to embody every skill above. More important are exceptional organization, follow-through, practical judgment, calm problem-solving, and genuine curiosity about how people understand fairness and cooperation differently across cultures. Project-specific tools and procedures can be learned on the job.
Who is this position for:
This position may be particularly well suited to a recent BA/BSc or MA/MSc graduate considering graduate school, research management, policy, or industry research who wants substantial responsibility for a large international research project.
You gain:
The position offers direct experience taking large international studies from concept through ethics, piloting, multilingual adaptation, preregistration, launch, data collection, and open-science release. You will work closely with investigators across psychology, decision science, computational methods, and cultural psychology and develop a portable track record in international research operations. Co-authorship is possible where contributions meet substantive CRediT-style authorship criteria. Previous lab members have subsequently pursued careers in academia, government, and industry research.
Application Information:
• Deadline: Applications will be reviewed beginning September 15, 2026 and will continue until the position is filled.
• Materials: CV and a one-page letter. In your letter, tell us about a project you kept on track when something went wrong. Briefly describe what went wrong, what specific actions you personally took, and what happened as a result.
• Contact: Dr. Grossmann at igrossma@uwaterloo.ca (subject line: “Cultural Narratives PM”]
• Canadian immigration-status statement: Please include one of the following statements with your application: “I am a Canadian citizen/permanent resident of Canada” OR “I am not a Canadian citizen/permanent resident of Canada.”
Equity Statement:
The University of Waterloo is committed to equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigenous reconciliation, and encourages applications from all qualified individuals. Priority will be given to Canadians and permanent residents in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements and ESDC mandates.