Matthew Robertson and Mitchell Ewald join the group
With the start of the spring term we welcome two new researchers to our group!
Dr. Matthew Robertson is joining us as a Post-Doctoral researcher. Matthew received his PhD in Political Science from the Australian National University under Benjamin Goldsmith, where his research focused on computational methods and authoritarian politics, particularly biopolitics and state exploitation of bodily resources in China. His work has appeared in leading journals including BMC Medical Ethics, American Journal of Transplantation, and the BMJ, with his research on organ procurement practices in China leading to policy changes by international medical societies and being the subject of U.S. congressional hearings. Drawing on his background in Chinese language and earlier work as an interpreter, translator, and financial researcher, Matthew combines computational methods with deep area expertise to study political violence, criminal justice, and human rights. He has developed several large-scale datasets of Chinese primary sources and maintains extensive digital archives of Party documents and academic publications, while also contributing to projects on forced labor and social governance as a consulting data engineer with nongovernmental organizations and a research officer at various Australian universities.
Mitchell Ewald is joining us as the enthusiastic TA for the MSc course Machine Learning and Causal Inference. He thrives in interdisciplinary quantitative social science -- especially loving work in computational social science, research design, and econometrics. Currently enrolled in the MA in Sociology program, Mitchell’s research focuses on computational demography and labor economics, where he applies machine learning to understand remote worker residential migration trends.
Welcome to the team, Matthew and Mitchell!