Meet Professor Laura Stephenson in this week’s Wisdom Wednesdays: Humans of Social Science. From election research to critical citizenship, her story explores how understanding motivation helps us make sense of political life. 🔗 ssc.uwo.ca/humans_ssc/m...

Matt Lebo, on Carney standing up to the bully: “If everybody takes a step forward then you’ve done something successfully and banded the kids together to be a united front against the bullying,” he said. “And if all the kids take one step back, then you’re screwed.” www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

⏳ Deadline approaching! We’re hiring 2 fully funded postdocs in #NLP. Join the MilaNLP team and contribute to our upcoming research projects (SALMON & TOLD) 🔗 Details + how to apply: milanlproc.github.io/open_positio... ⏰ Deadline: Jan 31, 2026

New paper with Justin Robinson @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social out at @electoralstudies.bsky.social! Our starting point is the observation that there is much variation in affective polarization across the UK. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Body Politics Lab/Political Science Speaker Dr. Tobias Rohrbach (Assistant Prof, Dept of Communication & Media Research, Fribourg U, Switzerland) Wed., Jan 14 @ 2:30pm. This workshop is designed to be an overview of the different steps of conceptualizing, conducting, & reporting a meta-analysis.

I know you all have your THOUGHTS on LLMs and their application in the social sciences... and I agree with all of them, but here is an extension of a method that uses in-context learning (ICL) to improve annotation of text using LLMs: 
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I know you all have your THOUGHTS on LLMs and their application in the social sciences... and I agree with all of them, but here is an extension of a method that uses in-context learning (ICL) to improve annotation of text using LLMs: 
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

¡Atención! 🚨 Se viene un nuevo Café ALACIP: "América Latina bajo presión: La encrucijada geopolítica". Contaremos con: ✅ A. Pérez-Liñán ✅ A. Aguiar ✅ O. Amorim Neto ✅ V. Mijares 🎤 Modera: Gisela Sin 📅 13 de enero ⏰ 9:30 MX / 10:30 COL-PER / 12:30 Cono Sur 📺 En vivo por YouTube (@alacip2216)

¡Atención! 🚨 Se viene un nuevo Café ALACIP: "América Latina bajo presión: La encrucijada geopolítica". Contaremos con: ✅ A. Pérez-Liñán ✅ A. Aguiar ✅ O. Amorim Neto ✅ V. Mijares 🎤 Modera: Gisela Sin 📅 13 de enero ⏰ 9:30 MX / 10:30 COL-PER / 12:30 Cono Sur 📺 En vivo por YouTube (@alacip2216)

Western is searching for Canada Impact+ Chairs in 8 themes including "democratic and community resilience." The program is meant for senior researchers not at Canadian unis. Moving to Canada is a thing that profs really can do. Spread the word & get in touch. www.uwo.ca/facultyrelat...

Santa came early this year and I just received my copy of City Politics in Canada, edited by Martin Horak, @jacklucas.bsky.social and @bigcitypolitics.bsky.social. I wrote the chapter on Ottawa (dedicated to the late Caroline Andrew).

Calling those looking to get feedback on their quant work📢: Join us at @TexasAM for TexMeth2026 this Feb. Great opportunity to connect with the regional community and showcase your research. The sun will still be strong for those coming from the north!🤝📊☀️ Apply: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Currently in FirstView: In “Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data,” Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, @tiagoventura.bsky.social, Tiago Ventura, @jonathannagler.bsky.social, @ericka.bric.digital, & Magdalena Wojcieszak provide evidence on survey professionalism across three samples.

Join us on Thursday, November 20th at 12:30pm as we welcome Prof. Adam Ali to our Research Seminar Series. "We will make refugees proud around the world, and we will make them smile': Necropolitics, post-colonialism, and the rise of the Olympic Refugee Team" All are welcome!

Watching Chilean election results come in and once again thinking about this tweet

📢 Apply now! @westernu.ca Political Science offering MA & PhD Fellowship w/ Drs. Alcantara & Stephenson’s @sshrc-crsh.canada.ca project on “The Determinants of Public Support for Indigenous Reconciliation Policies”🪶 Deadline: Feb 1, 2026 #WesternU #Reconciliation #Research #ldnont #Grads #Indigenous

👀 Think young Canadians aren’t political? Think again. From social movements to digital activism & community impact, research shows they’re leading change in unexpected ways ⬇️Watch now or ➡️ read more: news.westernu.ca #WesternU #WesternResearch #YouthPolitics #CanadianActivism #tiktokdebut #polisci

🏅We are proud to announce that William Poirier has been awarded the Dr. Harold D. Clarke Graduate Quantitative Research Methodology Fellowship for his demonstrated ability & interest in Quantitative Research Methodology. Congratulations on a well-deserved award! #westernu #quant #research #methods

Worried about getting into or out of the US for APSA 2026? Or about what kind of paper you can present? Today is the deadline for Canadian PSA proposals for June 2-4 at U of Ottawa. Propose a paper or a whole panel. But do it today!

Members from the @westernu.ca Political Science department attended the 11th Annual Toronto Political Behaviour Workshop (Nov. 7-8) at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy (UofT). #cdnpoli #politicalbehaviour #workshop #grads #uoft #politicaleconomy #tpbw #western 📸credit: Inaara Savani

I'm thrilled that my book, Unity through Particularism: How Electoral Reforms Influence Parties and Legislative Behavior, is now available for pre-order through CUP and Amazon! Let me know if you'd like an electronic copy for your class, and I'll send it to you! www.cambridge.org/us/universit...

lol

job TENURE-TRACK ASSISTANT PROFESSOR POSITION IN HEALTH AND THE LIFE COURSE OR WORK AND THE ECONOMY Department of Sociology, Western University Review of applications will commence on November 6th, 2025, and will continue until the position is filled. csn-rec.ca/job-postings...

Nerds: it's time for our Calgary municipal election forecasting contest! The winner gets a free copy of my forthcoming co-edited book, City Politics in Canada. Please share widely! #yyccc survey.ucalgary.ca/jfe/form/SV_...

The CPSA accepts proposals for full panels. Why not choose Ottawa in June instead of Boston, USA in September?

In 2024, we surveyed US scholars about how, when, why they do (or don’t!) personally participate. We find a few patterns, some differences by subfield and variation in our attitudes toward the place of personal politics in our work, especially the impacts on our credibility with the public.

Just *published* our paper with @westernupolisci.bsky.social PhD student, Hunter Driggers, on LLM bias from party cues in annotation tasks. We extend a previous study showing annotation bias from human coders in the presence of party cues… LLM show similar bias 🧵: rdcu.be/eIKCj

This is not entirely surprising: you train a model with huge amounts of human-created biased data, it will probably replicate this behaviour. The main takeaway here is that LLMs are biased in a very LLM way. They cling to these cues and do not self-correct (like human coders).

Just *published* our paper with @westernupolisci.bsky.social PhD student, Hunter Driggers, on LLM bias from party cues in annotation tasks. We extend a previous study showing annotation bias from human coders in the presence of party cues… LLM show similar bias 🧵: rdcu.be/eIKCj

If we set aside ad-hoc explanations, two forces stand out in shaping global development: colonial institutions and war—even if the former fails to explain Europe itself. Latin America has long tilted the debate away from the latter, but what if the real driver was war here as well?👇

Labels can impact politics. My paper @apsrjournal.bsky.social "What Happens When You Can't Check the Box?" shows when Middle Eastern & North African (MENA) Americans are excluded from identity categories, they assert MENA identity when answering relevant political questions. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

The New York Times What to know about the North American summit taking place without the U.S. As leaders of Canada and Mexico met this week to discuss trade, Professor @svallejovera.bsky.social Vallejo Vera explains what the meeting aims to accomplish. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/w...

🎉Now online (open access): "Hidden Majoritarianism and Women’s Career Progression in Proportional Representation Systems" at @apsrjournal.bsky.social. @alicirone.bsky.social, @teele.bsky.social, Gary Cox, @fiva.no. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨New Publication🚨 Using the entire #Canadian Election Study (1965–2021), I examine voter turnout by class, education, & income over time & test whether the offerings of political parties impact these relationships. Available #OpenAccess in @cjps-rcsp.bsky.social #polisky doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Comparative Politics Folks, we have a position at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. If y'all have any questions, send word. Great collegial department in an affordable urban location, plus there's the Smokies and outdoors. jobs.chronicle.com/job/37867857...

Stony Brook is hiring in political psychology (assistant professor). Please Share! Feel free to reach out if you have question. For more information: apply.interfolio.com/170193

Excited to cap off the summer with a new publication coauthored with @leahellmueller.bsky.social! We debunk the myth about the universal demand for #horserace news, offering evidence on fascinating cultural nuances on social news sharing #NewsEngagement #ElectionCoverage ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

We are very excited to have the brilliant @blairwelsh.bsky.social joining the Dept of Political Science @westernu.ca! Look for big things and important work in empirical IR; great for us and great for Canada! politicalscience.uwo.ca/about_us/new...

Come work with me/us!!! Happy to answer questions about our dept, Western, and Canadian academia. I absolutely love it here and highly recommend. Several of us will be at APSA and happy to meet. 🇨🇦

Come work with us at Western U!! Located at one of the Top 5 Londons in the world.

🚨 Paper now as "just accepted" at @The_JOP. We ran the first WhatsApp deactivation experiment focused on multimedia content ahead of the 2022 election in Brazil. We find a reduction in users' recall of false rumors -- and, to a smaller degree, of true news. Null effects on attitudes. Full thread ⬇️

The running joke in our family is just asking back “ok, but where are you REALLY from?”.

"Place Types." Excited that this paper with @sborwein.bsky.social is now available. We develop a new typology of place types in Canada at a fairly fine-grained level of geography, and then show how these place types relate to Canadian politics. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Happy to report that this article is now available: doi.org/10.1017/S000.... See Tyler's thread below for more detail on the associated R package and interactive online app.

Check out my new publication "Party Considerations for Renomination in Pre-Electoral Coalitions" at LSQ! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Uma honra ver o estudo que desenvolvi com o Mauricio Izumi na coluna da @laramesquita.bsky.social na Folha de S.Paulo. O outro trabalho que ela mencionar, de @svallejovera.bsky.social e Analia Gomez Vidal também traz muitas informações sobre gênero e silenciamento nos espaços de poder.

Natalia Aruguete, @tiagoventura.bsky.social & @ecalvo68.bsky.social examine how exposure to counter- and pro-attitudinal fact-checking messages impacts voters’ perception of the fact-checker: Fact-checking increases the reputation of the fact-checker but creates perceptions of ideological biases.

Looking for new research showing no backlash for misinformation corrections? Here is our recent paper: 🚨 Fact-checking increases perceptions of fact-checkers’ reputations, even for counter-attitudinal corrections to voters’ political views. Thanks @respol.bsky.social for publishing and sharing!