

Matthew Simonson
Networks | Conflict | Protest

Greetings!

I am a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania's Identity & Conflict Lab and will be starting as a senior lecturer (assistant professor) at Hebrew University in October 2023. I study violence, protest, and prejudice through the lens of social networks. In particular:
-
I use surveys and interviews to examine how cross-ethnic friendship networks led to rescuing and assistance in the Bosnian war
-
I study how cross-racial networks mobilized protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S.
-
I develop statistical methods for detecting spillover effects in network experiments
-
I co-direct the monthly Political Networks Online Colloquium (PNOC)
-
I conduct experiments on reducing prejudice against refugees in Uganda, Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey
-
As a member of the COVID States Project, I analyze trends in gun-buying, mental health, civic trust, and political violence during the pandemic across the US