Ph.D. Candidate
University of Western Ontario

Hello!

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. 

My doctoral dissertation (in progress) is titled Programmatic Polarization and Party Position Change in Canadian Provincial Party Systems, 1945-2020. I code an original dataset of over 450 provincial party platforms by fine-tuning a Large Language Model (LLM). I estimate provincial party positions and measure programmatic polarization, meaning the spread of
party policy positions, across post-war provincial elections. I also explore party position change between consecutive elections. My dissertation contributes to our understanding of provincial party system dynamics and strategic party behaviour. This project was supported by a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

I am broadly interested in Canadian politics, urban and local politics, and public policy. Methodologically, I rely on both quantitative (e.g., regression, quantitative text analysis) and qualitative (e.g., interviews, archival research) techniques. ​

I have taught introductory undergraduate courses in public policy and data science.