CV

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KARSTEN DONNAY
Assistant Professor of Political Behavior and Digital Media

Department of Political Science &
Digital Society Initiative
University of Zurich
8050 Zurich, Switzerland

donnay@ipz.uzh.ch

Employment

Assistant Professor of Political Behavior and Digital Media, Department of Political Science & Digital Society Initiative, University of Zurich, since 2020

Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, 2016-2020

Postdoctoral Researcher, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), University of Maryland, 2015-2016

Postdoctoral Researcher and Visiting Lecturer, Department of International Relations & Political Science, Graduate Institute Geneva, 2014-2016

Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Professorship of Computational Social Science, 2014-2015

Education

ETH Zürich
Dr. sc., Department of Humanities, Social and Political Science, 2010-2014
Dissertation: “Disaggregating Civil Conflict”
Committee: Dirk Helbing, Ravi Bhavnani, Scott E. Page

TU München
Dipl. Phys., Department of Physics, 2008-2009
Major fields: Theoretical Physics, Complex Systems

McGill University
Graduate studies, Department of Physics, 2007-2008
Major fields: Theoretical Physics, Complex Systems

TU München
Undergraduate studies, Department of Physics and Mathematics, 2004-2007
Major fields: Physics, Mathematics

Research Interests

Political communication and behavior:
Media bias and its influence on collective decision making
Automated hate speech detection and counter speech strategies
Impact of algorithmic decision-making on social processes
Social influence through traditional and online media

Computational social science:
Statistical and experimental analysis on digital media
Machine/deep learning and automated text classification
Large-scale data processing and analysis
Causal inference in (geo-referenced) micro-level data
(Agent-based) Computational modeling

Academic Honors and Fellowships

2019-2021 Fellowship of the Academy of Sciences of Baden Württemberg for outstanding junior researchers (WIN-Kolleg)

2015 American Journal of Political Science Best Article Award for “Group Segregation and Urban Violence”

2015 Nominated for ETH Dissertation Award (ETH Medal)

2015 Nominated for Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) Award 2015

2015 Nominated for Swiss Institute of International Studies (SIAF) Award 2015

Grants

2024-2028 Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Project funding: Improving the Quality of Online Public Discourse  (project co-lead, details)

2023–2026 TRANSFORM grant supporting the creation of the UZH Population Research Center (project co-lead, details)

2021–2025 DIZH Infrastructure grant for establishing the DigiVox Panel Survey infrastructure (project co-lead, details)

2021–2022 BAKOM Funding in support of the Stop Hate Speech project consortium led by Alliance F (project co-lead, details)

2020-2022 InnoSuisse Funding in support of the Stop Hate Speech project consortium led by Alliance F (project co-lead, details)

2019-2023 WIN Program: Fake News and Collective Decision Making – Rapid Automated Assessment of Media Bias (project lead, details)

2018-2021 DFID: Modeling Early Risk Indicators to Anticipate Malnutrition, MERIAM (IHEID project co-lead, details)

2014-2018: NSF INSPIRE: Computational Modeling of Grievances and Political Instability through Global Media (postdoctoral researcher, details)

2014-2018 MINERVA: Aiding Resilience? The Impact of Foreign Assistance on the Dynamics of Intrastate Armed Conflict (postdoctoral researcher, details)

Professional Service

Manuscripts:
Social Science: American Political Science Review; American Journal of Political Science; British Journal of Political Science; Journal of Conflict Resolution; Journal of Peace Research; Research & Politics; Political Science Research and Methods; Political Geography; Journal of Information Technology & Politics; International Studies Quarterly; European Political Science Review; Terrorism and Political Violence; Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy; Journal of Peace Building & Development; Global Studies Quarterly; Rationality and Society; Ethics and Information Technology
General Interest and Methodology: Nature; Science Advances; Physical Review Letters; Nature Communications; Nature Human Behavior; Physical Review E; Journal of the Royal Society Interface; Scientific Reports; Annals of Applied Statistics; Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; Advances in Complex Systems; PLoS ONE; Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Computational Social Science

Grant Proposals: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); US National Science Foundation (NSF); German Research Foundation (DFG); Minerva Research Initiative; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Memberships

European Political Science Association
Swiss Political Science Association
American Political Science Association
International Studies Association
Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft