Below is an excerpt from a faculty spotlight on NULab Faculty Nicholas Beauchamp an his research in political science.
“Throughout high school and college, Associate Professor of Political Science Nick Beauchamp was more interested in mathematics, philosophy, and literature than politics. While working on an MA in English literature at John Hopkins, his interests turned increasingly to digital humanities and politics, and after receiving his MA, he worked at the Carter Center doing election observation in various countries. While there, accusations of electoral fraud in Venezuela were coming to light, and Beauchamp was assigned the task of performing an analysis of the accusations. As many of the accusations were quantitative, he found himself searching for patterns within the electoral data using statistical methods. From there, he realized that he wanted to pursue political studies and quantitative research professionally. He went to graduate school to pursue a PhD in political science at New York University and graduated in 2012.
Much of Beauchamp’s research revolves around the intersection between public opinion, text data, and computational methods. Wanting to combine his early interest in philosophy with the more pressing political issues, Beauchamp strives to look beyond left vs. right political spectrums in his research, and explores patterns in the ways that people think about and discuss politics. He is interested in media bias in the reporting of politics, how politicians interact and address one another publicly, and how people engage with each other about politics over social media. His research also explores questions about the morality behind politics and political expression.”
You can read the full article on the College of Social Sciences and Humanities blog here: Faculty Spotlight: Nicholas Beauchamp.
