I am the Research Manager at CivilServant and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan. In both endeavors I study behavior online - in my dissertation work to understand partisanship in social media and, with CivilServant, to help online communities learn which interventions best support their community goals.
Although an observer of human behavior and and fan of democracy since my teen years, it took me a couple of decades for me to realize I could study human behavior in a democratic context. Before then, I spent over a decade working in public education, teaching high school ESL in Budapest and Guangzhou, advocating for students rights in NYC public schools and finally founding an after-school theater program for NYC public school teens.
It was the US entry in the the Iraq war and the preceding media coverage (and lack of public debate) that reawakened my age-old concerns about the robustness of our democracy. I and a few friends subsequently experimented with reinvigorating cross-partisan dialogue, but with limited success (although with lots of great cocktails along the way). But it was that experiment that turned my interest in political behavior into an obsession. It did, however, take me a couple more years (and a worthwhile detour getting a masters from HKS), before I turned fascination into vocation, first assisting Eli Pariser in his research for The Filter Bubble, then later working as an RA for Todd Rogers - and finally having the great fortune to be tutored by the great minds at UM's Political Science department.
Although an observer of human behavior and and fan of democracy since my teen years, it took me a couple of decades for me to realize I could study human behavior in a democratic context. Before then, I spent over a decade working in public education, teaching high school ESL in Budapest and Guangzhou, advocating for students rights in NYC public schools and finally founding an after-school theater program for NYC public school teens.
It was the US entry in the the Iraq war and the preceding media coverage (and lack of public debate) that reawakened my age-old concerns about the robustness of our democracy. I and a few friends subsequently experimented with reinvigorating cross-partisan dialogue, but with limited success (although with lots of great cocktails along the way). But it was that experiment that turned my interest in political behavior into an obsession. It did, however, take me a couple more years (and a worthwhile detour getting a masters from HKS), before I turned fascination into vocation, first assisting Eli Pariser in his research for The Filter Bubble, then later working as an RA for Todd Rogers - and finally having the great fortune to be tutored by the great minds at UM's Political Science department.
