Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Protests in the United States on Palestine and Israel, 2023-2024” Social Movement Studies (forthcoming 2024) (with Erica Chenoweth, Jay Ulfelder, and Jeremy Pressman)
“Political Sources of Urban Concentration in Latin America,” Regional Studies, Regional Science (2023) (with Melissa Rogers)
Research Articles in Progress
"Analyzing Administrative and Police Responses to the 2024 Student Palestine Solidarity Encampments in the United States" (with Erica Chenoweth, Jay Ulfelder, and Jeremy Pressman)
“A Computational Analysis of Civil Resistance Dynamics and Outcomes”
“Effects of Police Fatal Encounters on Birth Outcomes in California” (with Javier Rodriguez)
“Assessing Bias in Cross-Level Aggregation of Geographic Epidemiological Data to Policy-Meaningful Localities: A Case Study in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias” (with Javier Rodriguez, Dong Wook Lee, Sandra P. Garcia, and Melissa Rogers)
Research Experience
Dissertation Research (2018 – 2022)
Conduct a computational analysis of civil resistance to examine the connection between the characteristics of civil resistance movements, repression, and outcomes.
Apply machine learning algorithms to the NAVCO 2.1 dataset to simultaneously test and rank-order a large set of variables according to their likelihood of shaping civil resistance outcomes.
Extend the findings using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to test the effect of proximity between same-year campaigns on their success.
Explore the dynamics of modular political action and how the imitation of prior successful examples differed during the Arab Spring from the post-communist pro-democracy movements.
Apply agent-based modeling to explore the emergent behavior in civil resistance processes and, using case studies from the Arab Spring, investigate how different mobilization scenarios can lead to different outcomes.
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Nonviolent Action Lab (November 2023 – Present)
Directly contribute to data collection and analysis for a dynamic portfolio of research, writing, and dissemination activities for the Nonviolent Action Lab's Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC).
CCC is a multi-year collaboration between Harvard Kennedy School Professor Erica Chenoweth and Professor Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut to produce and disseminate up-to-date data on political mobilization and police response in the United States for use by researchers, journalists, and activists.
Work with the Nonviolent Action Lab's Research Project Manager, Dr. Jay Ulfelder, and with faculty PIs on scope and design, including identifying key deliverables and timelines.
Ensure highest quality research and analysis, writing, editing, and presentation through recruitment, onboarding, and supervision of research assistants and other contributors.
Ensure contributors have resources needed to succeed, especially training, guidance, and feedback on their data collection and analysis work.
Develop and implement recommendations for improving data collection and research deliverables in consultation with PIs.
Contribute to the strategic planning and development of Crowd Counting Consortium projects.
Provide consistent and reliable project management, from setting and monitoring timelines and deliverables to ensuring coordination and improving workflow processes.
Work with Ash Center Communications and Events teams to coordinate wide dissemination.
Facilitate final preparation and dissemination of data, policy briefs, and other deliverables.
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Inequality and Policy Research Center (July 2022 – Present)
Engage in scientific analysis of political, health, socioeconomic, and group-specific inequality in the United States and abroad.
Develop evidence-based policy and program solutions to problems that originate from, or are related to, inequality.
Current projects under development include a study of the effect of police fatal encounters on premature births in the United States.
Create a quasi-experimental design to birth medical records to test the hypothesis that police fatal encounters in California influence pre-term (PB) and low-weight birth rates (LBW) in the immediate vicinity of these incidents.
Work discreetly with restricted birth data from California Department of Public Health and insuring data is handled according to confidentiality protocol.
Develop and validate a geospatial model for the identification of birth records in which mothers were exposed to police fatal encounters during pregnancy, at varying degrees of geographic proximity.
Manage project documentation, including data requests and renewals.
Graduate Research Assistant: Geography of Alzheimer’s Disease (July 2021 – June 2022)
Worked with Dr. Javier Rodriguez on a research project that studies mechanisms to adequately designate geospatial locations of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia events to their corresponding administrative division.
The goal is to improve the effectiveness of the policy prescriptions and resource allocation that originate from health geography research.
The project received a grant from The Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities which is funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIH).
Collected large volumes of data from the American Community Survey.
Assisted with the logistics of transferring big data into virtual machine for analysis.
Explored the Geographic Correspondence Engine (Geocorr 2018) to generate custom correlation lists between different geographic levels.
Integrated high-resolution population density maps to assign ACS values to lower geographic administrative levels using GIS.
Developed and maintained project documentation.
Assisted in writing grant progress reports.
Assisted in writing the final project report and developing a journal article based on the findings.
Research collaboration: Political Sources of Urban Concentration in Latin America (February 2018– Present)
An ongoing research collaboration with Dr. Melissa Rogers on the political determinants of urbanization.
Conduct a literature review of urban mapping using stable night-time light data.
Collect and analyze data from the National Center for Environmental Information and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network.
Analyze the data using Geographic Information Systems.
Document different patterns of city growth, spread, and decentralization across nations not easily explained by topographical or economic factors.
Estimate measures of urban concentration such as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) based on nightlight and population distribution.
Research Collaboration: Race and the Heat Island Effect (August 2020 – Present)
An ongoing research collaboration with Dr. Heather Campbell and Dr. Melissa Rogers on the racial inequality aspect of the Urban Heat Island effect.
Conducted literature review of Urban Land Surface Temperature measurement using remote sensing.
Researched and compared possible sources of satellite images, environmental hazard data, and racial segregation measures.
Performed a spatial analysis of Urban Heat Island using Geographic Information Systems.
Research Collaboration: Politics of Spatial Urbanization February 2018– Present
Graduate Research Assistant (July 2017 – February 2018)
Engaged in research with Dr. Mark Abdollahian on a study of human development dynamics in the Middle East.
Collected survey data. Researched and analyzed information from journals, books, and electronic sources.
Performed case study analysis of Arab countries at different stages of development.