Student Opportunities

RA will assist Dr. Forrester with several research projects over the academic year 2025-2026. The student will primarily work on three projects:

1. Literature review for various projects and papers on environmental justice. The RA will review the philosophical literature on climate migration, stranded assets and climate justice. The RA will also review the legal literature on conservation easements and similar legal instruments in other countries. Finally, the RA will assist Dr. Forrester in investigating proposals for ecosystem service and carbon offsetting marketplaces.
2. Literature review for a project on intellectual property. Student will assist Dr. Forrester in analyzing the philosophical literature on different kinds of intellectual property protections (e.g., copyright, patent, trademark, etc.). A significant part of this research project will be locating inefficiencies that arise from either too much or too little protection of intellectual property.
3. Preparation of a scholarly edition of the primary writings of Henry George. This may involve traveling to Princeton, NJ for archival work 1-2 times per semester, typically on a Friday. This project will involve collaborating with scholars from other institutions. This project may require working closely with librarians at Penn as well.

The student should expect to have weekly meetings during the semester with Dr. Forrester to discuss their progress in research activities. The student should have good skills with using large-language models to aid in the routine parts of research, but should also be able to add value to the research process above and beyond recycling the outputs of an AI model.  Student should have or be ready to develop competence with Zotero (a citation management tool). Previous experience with long-term research projects like a substantial term paper is a plus.

Send your resume and a 300-word statement of interest to pforr@wharton.upenn.edu.

Wanted:  law students or Wharton/SAS graduate/undergraduate students for research in different topics. Law journal or other academic research and writing experience preferred but not required.

The following work is currently in various stages of progress:

Climate topics: including separate papers related to corporate fiduciary duties, cooperatives, consumer law/policy, and double materiality.

Business theory: chapters in larger book project on normative theories of business purposes (including philosophical, historical, legal, sociological, and economic themes).

Business ethics: paper applying the social theories of the contemporary German philosopher Axel Honneth to business ethics.

Law of extortion and bribery: for possible current events piece.

Business and the rule of law: for possible business practitioner piece.