Math-Political Science Interested Faculty

My general approach to mathematical modeling in the political and social sciences arises from nonlinear systems as well as linear statistical models. I teach two courses that might interest Math-POLS majors. On the statistical side, I teach a statistics course (POLS 310W: Statistical Modeling) that also satisfies the Emory College writing requirement. The emphasis in the course is on scientific writing that incorporates a wide range of statistical approaches, up through both linear and logistic regression. On the nonlinear side, the natural world is nonlinear in nearly all of its aspects. It only makes sense that human political and social behavior should also reflect nonlinearity in its internal structure. My advanced seminar (POLS 494W: Modeling Nonlinear Politics) teaches students easy to master techniques for constructing nonlinear models that display remarkably interesting overtime behaviors that are relevant to all sorts of political and social behavior and phenomena. This course also satisfies the College writing requirement.

I am an applied formal theorist who uses quantitative approaches to model behavior in strategic environments and statistical approaches to empirically evaluate implications of the models. Substantively, I am interested in judicial, legislative and bureaucratic politics. I focus on why we observe the institutions we do, the policy consequences of institutional design, and how these institutions change over time. I teach courses on Comparative politics, European politics, judicial politics, game theory, and applied research projects. My day job now focuses on building the Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods.

I'm an empirical methodologist who works on questions of measurement, causal inference, and missing data problems. Much of my recent work has focused on the politics of policing, where my coauthors and I have measured a number of quantities and effects relating to officer involved shootings. I teach QTM 220, which might be of interest to students in the Math-POLS program. This course provides an introduction to the use of regression for description, population inference, missing data, and causal inference. Calculus, linear algebra, and mathematical statistics are prerequisites for the course.

I am a formal theorist who specializes in institutions and how they shape individual behaviors.  In addition to game theoretic models, I also work on computational models.  I have broad substantive interests, including coordination problems, information transmission, collective action, and collective choice.  I regularly teach undergraduate and graduate courses on how to build and analyze your own models.  Please feel free to contact me if you're interested in modeling social, economic, or political behavior!

I conduct empirical research (statistical analysis using data) to study how elections work and the influence of elections on public policy outcomes. I regularly teach POLS 360: Public Policy. This is a great course for applying your Math-POLS skills and training to understand how policymakers can improve societal outcomes, the challenges and tradeoffs that policymakers face, and the rules of how public policy gets made. We use some basic mathematical models and read papers that use statistical analysis to investigate these topics. I'm also the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Political Science so if you have any questions about the major, possible career paths, or anything else Political Science-related, I'd be happy to chat. 

I am interested in the ability of people to use law in order to stabilize political regimes. Much of my research focuses on understanding how judges manage the challenges associated with holding powerful political officials to domestic and international limits on their authority. I have focused on Latin American states, though my recent work is in the context of the immigration law system of the United States. I use both formal theory and statistical methods, though I would say that my methodological interests are pragmatic in the sense that they are designed to identify the appropriate tools for the question I am trying to answer.