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Matthew Simonson
Networks | Conflict | Protest

Greetings!
I am a political science postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania's Identity & Conflict Lab under Dr. Nicholas Sambanis, currently on the academic job market. I study violence, protest, and prejudice through the lens of social networks.
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I use surveys and interviews to examine how cross-ethnic friendship networks mobilized rescuers during the Bosnian war and genocide and protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the US
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I develop new causal inference methods for networks
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I co-host a conference on overcoming anti-immigrant prejudice that brings together political scientists, psychologists, and practitioners
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I carry out survey experiments and randomized control trials to study how to reduce prejudice and prevent conflict
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I analyze gun purchases, mass killings, and support for political violence
I earned my Ph.D. in network science from Northeastern University, where I was a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellow. My work has been covered in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, CBS, and NPR. I can be reached at msimonso@sas.upenn.edu
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