For the 2018 - 2019 academic year I will be a postdoctoral researcher at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Starting in 2019, I will be an assistant professor of political science at New York University in Abu Dhabi.

My main line of empirical research examines the influential role played by powerful businesspeople during political instability. Through field research and surveys of businesspeople in North Africa, I show how businesspeople’s engagement with emerging democracies is especially problematic when business is united against democracy. This outcome is much more likely to occur if a powerful state actor, such as the Egyptian military, is able to force businesspeople to work together to undermine democratization. You can access my CV from this link.

I also have ongoing projects in Bayesian modeling, time-series econometrics and psychometric measurement models that are aimed at advancing the ability of social scientists to handle noisy observational data. To that end, I am the author of an R package idealstan that implements new forms of the ideal point model (latent variable model) that is particularly applicable to studying public opinion, legislative activity and social media.

• idealstan: A Package for Bayesian Ideal-Point Modeling with Stan

  Thu, Jan 11, 2018, StanCon 2018 Conference

• Islamist-Secularist Polarization during the Arab Uprisings

  Fri, Sep 1, 2017, American Political Science Association Annual Conferece

• Making Democracy Safe for Business: Business Collective Action in Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia

  Fri, Sep 1, 2017, American Political Science Association Annual Conferece

• rmk7xy@virginia.edu
• bobkubinec1