All Funded Projects

2023

In the 2022-2023 academic year, DDSS provided funding for 16 projects. We received applications from, and made awards to, a wide range of academic departments and centers across the University, including the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Computer Science, Economics, University Center for Human Values, Politics, the Office of Population Research, Psychology, Sociology, and the School of Public and International Affairs. DDSS awarded funds to 8 faculty projects, 5 projects led by graduate students, and 3 projects led by postdoctoral fellows or professional researchers.

Funded small grant proposals

Vertical and Horizontal Occupational Mobility in Organizations

Researcher: Hunter York (Gradudate Student)
Dept: Sociology


Statistically Analyzing the Language of the Federal Reserve Board

Researcher: Denis Peskoff (Postdoctoral Research Associate)
Dept: Office of Population Research


Intra-party Competition and Candidate Selection - Evidence from Historical Data Collected via a Semi-automated OCR Workflow

Researcher: Thomas Tichelbaecker (Graduate Student)
Dept: Politics


National Database for Electoral Quotas in India

Researcher: Bhumi Purohit (Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow)
Dept: SPIA


Historical Data on Racial Strife in the US Military

Researcher: Christopher Blair (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Politics


Winogrande Sentences Comparing Humans and GPT4

Researcher: Adele Goldberg (Professor)
Dept: Psychology


Genomic Social Demography: Leveraging DNA to Explore the Dynamic Relationship Between Race and Ancestry in the United States

Researcher: Sam Trejo (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Sociology

 

Funded large (>$5k) grant proposals

Making the Forms 990 Open Access: Unleashing Nonprofit Tax Data to Invigorate Social Science Research

Researcher: Kristopher Velasco (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Sociology


Methods for the Analysis of High-Frequency Survey Data

Researcher: Jacob Tucker (Graduate Student)
Dept: Politics


The Measurement Validity of Topic Models in Social Science and Viable Alternatives

Researcher: Brandon Stewart (Associate Professor)
Dept: Sociology


Today's Laws and Yesterday's Animus

Researcher: Diag Davenport (Postdoctoral Research Associate)
Dept: SPIA


Religious Identity Choice: Evidence from a Billion Indian Names

Researcher: Tanushree Goyal (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Automating Classification of Moral Reasoning in Natural Language

Researcher: Molly Crockett (Associate Professor)
Dept: Psychology and University Center for Human Values


Proposal for an Experimental Research Infrastructure to Study Social Media Platforms

Researcher: William Schulz (Graduate Student)
Dept: Politics


Computational Analysis of Police Body-Worn Camera Footage

Researcher: Brandon Stewart (Associate Professor)
Dept: Sociology


Exploring the Social Construction of Value in Blockchain Systems

Researcher: Ari Dyckovsky (Graduate Student)
Dept: Psychology

 

2022

In the 2021-2022 academic year, DDSS provided funding to 19 projects across all social science departments, as well as the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Anthropology, the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), Computer Science, the Office of Population Research (OPR), Psychology, Sociology, the School of Public and International Affairs.This included the funding of 8 small-scale grants and 11 large-scale grants. Funded projects involved over 9 faculty members, 6 graduate students, and 4 postdoctoral fellows or professional researchers.

Funded small grant proposals

Costly Protest Actions Help Social Movements Overcome Motivated Skepticism

Researcher: Benjamin Crisman (Grad Student)
Dept: Politics


Investigating How Online Platforms Shape the Politically Sensible

Researcher: Orestis Papakyriakopoulos (Postdoctoral Research Associate)
Dept: Center for Information Technology Policy


Building a Video Database of Caregiver-Infant Interactions in the United States and Kenya

Researcher: Jessica Kosie (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)
Dept: Psychology


Gender in the Journals: A Dataset of Gender and Politics Research

Researcher: Carolyn Barnett (Grad Student)
Dept: Politics


Progress for Whom? Analyzing How LGBTQ Legal Victories Influence U.S. Anti-LGBTQ Organizations’ Foreign Expenditures

Researcher: Kristopher Velasco (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Sociology


Russian State Propaganda Narratives Surrounding the War in Ukraine

Researcher: Isabelle DeSisto (Grad Student)
Dept: Politics


The Role of Stereotypes in Machine Learning

Researcher: Angelina Wang (Grad Student)
Dept: Computer Science


Dynamic Estimates of Survey Question Answers Using Publicly Available Social Media Data

Researcher: Grigore Pop-Eleches (Professor)
Dept: Politics


 

Funded large (>$5k) grant proposals

Rally: An Open Platform for Large Scale Browser Based Studies

Researcher: Jonathan Mayer (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


A Measure of Informativeness for Political Texts

Researcher: Dahyun Choi (Grad Student)
Dept: Politics


Financialization and the Politics of Housing Crises

Researcher: Andreas Wiedemann (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Digital Methods to Map Stakeholder Influence on Climate Policy Discourse in India

Researcher: Pooja Ramamurthi (Grad Student)
Dept: SPIA


Designing Climate Change Resiliency in Princeton, NJ

Researcher: Carolyn Rouse (Ritter Professor Anthropology)
Dept: Anthropology


Propagating Repressive Apparatus Social Media

Researcher: Xu Xu (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Financial Frictions and Misallocation of Innovation

Researcher: Adrien Matray (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Economics


Uncovering Climate Change Narratives across US Labor Coalitions: a Longitudinal Analysis of Multi-Sector Union Discourse

Researcher: Holly Caggiano (Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow)
Dept: Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment


Lemons in the Political Marketplace: A Big-Data Approach to Detect ‘Scam PACs’

Researcher: Zhao Li (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Developing New Tools for Measuring Emotions and Self-Awareness

Researcher: Haran Sened (Visiting Fellow)
Dept: Psychology


Building a Dataset of Web Browsing and Social Media Activity for the 2022 U.S. Election Cycle

Researcher: Jonathan Mayer (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Computer Science and Princeton


 

2021

In the 2020-2021 academic year, DDSS provided funding to 27 projects across all social science departments, as well as the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), Computer Science, Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE), and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. This included the funding of 17 small-scale grants and 10 large-scale grants. Funded projects involved over 12 faculty members, 12 graduate students, and 3 postdoctoral fellows or professional researchers.

Funded small grant proposals

Decoding Subnational Propaganda Strategies in China

Researcher: Xiaoxiao Shen (PhD student, Rory Truex, advisor)
Dept: Politics


Mobility Effects of Immigration Restriction: Evidence from Chinese Exclusion

Researcher: Hannah Postel (Research Assistant)
Dept: SPIA


The Impact of Discrimination on Coalition-Building: Asian Americans in the Era of COVID-19

Researcher: Stephanie Chan, Sonya Chen (PhD Students, Dara Strolovitch, advisor)
Dept: Politics


The Emergence of Polarized Social Networks via Information Cascades

Researcher: Chris Tokita (PhD Student, Andrew Guess, Corina Tarnita, advisor)
Dept: Ecology & Evolutionary Biology


Fixing for the Future with Lessons of the Past: The Determinants of Effective Foreign Policy Reform

Researcher: Ryan Dukeman (PhD Student, Prof. G. John Ikenberry, advisor)
Dept: Politics


The Zillow Effect: Public School Ratings and Residential Place Discrimination

Researcher: Adam Goldstein (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Sociology


Public Beliefs and Marriage Formation: Evidence From Online Experiments

Researcher: Daniela Urbina Julio (Graduate Student, Dalton Conley, advisor)
Dept: Sociology


Partisan Polarization and Support for Democratic Norms

Researcher: Rory Truex (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Politics


How Civic Education Can Shape Political Engagement

Researcher: Claire Willeck (Graduate student, Tali Mendelberg, advisor)
Dept: Politics


Investigating the Effect of Non-state Endorsements on Individuals' Receptiveness to State Media in China

Researcher: Hannah Waight (PhD Student, Brandon Stewart, Eliot Chen, Yan Bennett, advisors)
Dept: Sociology


From Pluribus to Unum: Statebuilding in 19th Century America

Researcher: Melissa M. Lee (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Politics


Dallas: Connecting Economic and Social Life in a Network of Elite Families, 1890-1950

Researcher: Shay O’Brien (Graduate Student)
Dept: Sociology

Dept: Politics


Characteristics of Political Discourse in Social Media

Researcher: Amy Winecoff (Data Scientist)
Dept: Center for Information Technology Policy


Spatial Inequality and Policy Mismatch: Measuring Party Positions Through Digital Political Advertising

Researcher: Andreas Wiedemann (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Black Political Empowerment and Incarceration in the Postbellum American South

Researcher: Susanne Schwarz (Graduate Student, Paul Frymer, advisor)
Dept: Politics


Pilot Chat Experiments with ReChat

Researcher: William S. Schulz (Graduate Student)
Dept: Politics


Identifying Propaganda: Holdout Validation and Extrapolation

Researcher: Hannah Waight (PhD Student, Brandon Stewart, Margaret Roberts, Yin Yuan)
Dept: Sociology


Funded large (>$5K) grant proposals

Partisan Polarization and Support for Democratic Norms

Researcher: Rory Truex (Assistant Professor)
Dept: Politics


Understanding Successful Social Interactions

Researcher: Lily Tsoi (Post Doc Research Fellow)
Dept: Psychology


Information Overload and Dynamic Judgment in High-Speed Politics

Researcher: Markus Prior (Professor)
Dept: Politics


Building a Large-scale, Cross-Cultural Dataset to Advance Theory and Methods in Infant Cognition

Researcher: Casey Lew-Williams (Professor)
Dept: Psychology


A Multi-Country Database of Income Dynamics and Inequality

Researcher: Gianluca Violante (Professor)
Dept: Economics


The Person Project A Dynamic Platform for Large-Scale Social Science

Researcher: Stacey Sinclair (Professor)
Dept: Psychology


Computational Analysis of Police Body-Worn Camera Footage

Researcher: Jonathan Mummolo (Assistant Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Follow the Money: Tracking Monetization of COVID-Misinformation

Researcher: Jacob Shapiro (Professor)
Dept: SPIA


Pushing the Boundaries With Video Data

Researcher: Thomas Espenshade (Professor, Emeritus. Senior Scholar), Jeffrey Himpele (Director, Ethnographic Data Visualization Lab, Lecturer)
Dept: Sociology, Anthropology


Rally: An Open Platform for Large Scale Browser Based Studies

Researcher: Jonathan Mayer (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Public Affairs)
Dept: SPIA


2020

In the 2019-2020 academic year, DDSS provided funding to 32 projects across all social science departments, as well as Computer Science, ORFE, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. This included the funding of 20 small-scale grants and 12 large-scale grants. Funded projects involving over 30 faculty members, 13 graduate students, and 10 postdoctoral fellows or professional researchers.

Funded small grant proposals

Incorporating context into a computational similarity measure: introducing relative relevant cosine (RCC)

Researcher: Adele Goldberg (Professor)
Affiliated Department: Psychology


The politics of consumption

Researcher: Jacob Shapiro (Professor)
Affiliated Department: SPIA/Politics


The social consequences of foreign capital liberalization

Researcher: Adrien Matray (Assistant Professor)
Affiliated Department: Economics


Bridging Divides Initiative: Patterns of increased risk of political violence ahead of the 2020 elections

Researcher: Nealin Parker (Professional Specialist and Lecturer)
Affiliated Department: SPIA


Social media and election outcomes

Researcher: Karsten Mueller (Postdoctoral research associate)
Affiliated Department: SPIA


The political economy of convict leasing in the Postbellum American South

Researcher: Susanne Schwarz (Graduate student – Paul Frymer, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Politics


Can civics teaching methods increase political participation?

Researcher: Claire Willeck (Graduate student – Tali Mendelberg, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Politics


Effects of diversity pipeline programs on doctorates’ academic career outcomes and scientific outputs

Researcher: Janet Xu (Graduate student – Matt Salganik, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Sociology


Decoding subnational propaganda strategies in China

Researcher: Xiaoxiao Shen (Graduate student – Rory Truex, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Politics


Creation of data set examining U.S. budget processes

Researcher: Patricia Kirkland (Assistant Professor)
Affiliated Department: SPIA


Panel dataset of criminal group presence in Mexican municipalities

Researcher: Patrick Signoret (Graduate student – Jake Shapiro, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Politics


Public Beliefs and Marriage Formation: Evidence from online experiments

Researcher: Daniela Urbina Julio (Graduate Student – Dalton Conley, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Sociology


Transportation infrastructure networks, political institutions, and polarization

Researcher: Leonard Wantchekon (Professor)
Affiliated Department: Politics


Intertemporal Choice During Crisis

Researcher: Tom Griffiths (Professor)
Affiliated Department: Psychology


Constructing the First Preposition-based Semantic Annotation of Roberto Busa's Index Thomisticus

Researcher: Herrissa Lamothe (Graduate Student – Kim Scheppele, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Sociology


Social norms dynamics as a complex adaptive system

Researcher: Vitor Vasconcelos (Postdoctoral research associate)
Affiliated Department: SPIA


Mobility Effects of Immigration Restriction: Evidence from Chinese Exclusion

Researcher: Hannah Postel (Graduate Student – Leah Boustan, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Economics


Public perceptions of state performance: Evidence from Weibo posts during the COVID-19 Crisis

Researcher: Lai Wei (Graduate Student); Elaine Yao (Graduate student – Dean Knox, advisor)
Affiliated Department: Sociology/Politics


Human Expertise vs. Data, Algorithms, and Computation: Understanding How Machine Learning Predictions Improve College Choice Decisions

Researcher: Xiaoyang Ye (Postdoctoral research associate)
Affiliated Department: SPIA


Digital artifacts from Hong Kong anti-extradition bill social movement

Researcher: Robin Lee (Graduate Student); Lillian Leung (Graduate Student
Affiliated Department: Sociology


The Impact of Discrimination on Coalition-Building: Asian Americans in the Era of COVID-19

Researcher: Stephanie Chan, Sonya Chen (PhD Students); Dara Strolovitch, advisor
Affiliated Department: Politics


The Zillow Effect: Public School Ratings And Residential Place Discrimination

Researcher: Adam Goldstein (Assistant Professor)
Affiliated Department: Sociology


Fixing for the Future with Lessons of the Past: The Determinants of Effective Foreign Policy Reform

Researcher: Ryan Dukeman (PhD Student); G. John Ikenberry, advisor
Affiliated Department: Politics


 

 

 

Funded large (>$5K) grant proposals

New Developments in Synthetic Control Methods

Researcher: Matias Cattaneo (Professor), Rocio Titiunik (Professor)
Affiliated Department: ORFE, Politics


Understanding attribution and adaptive behavior to extreme climatic events: A social-ecological-technical systems perspective

Researcher: Elke Weber (Professor), Simon Levin (Professor), Sara Constantino (Postdoc), Alicia Cooperman (Postdoc), Elisabeth Krueger(Postdoc), Vitor Vasconcelos (Postdoc)
Affiliated Department: SPIA, Andlinger Center, EEB, PIIRS, PEI


Pushing the boundaries with video data

Researcher: Thomas Espenshade (Senior Scholar), Jeffrey Himpele (Director, Viz Lab; Lecturer)
Affiliated Department: Sociology, Anthropology


Historical inequality and long-term development in Brazil

Researcher: Thomas Fujiwara (Associate Professor), Marcelo Medeiros (Visiting Professor), Miqueias Mugge (Associate Research Scholar)
Affiliated Department: Economics, PLAS, PIIRS


The demobilizing effects of pretrial incarceration

Researcher: Tali Mendelberg (Professor), Anne McDonough (Research Fellow), Ted Enamorado (UNC Chapel Hill)
Affiliated Department:Politics


The content of political campaign emails

Researcher: Arvind Narayanan (Professor), Brandon Stewart (Assistant Professor), Arunesh Mathur (Doctoral student), Carsten Schwemmer (Postdoc), Angelina Wang (Doctoral Student)
Affiliated Department: Computer Science, Sociology, CITP


Prejudice reduction: Creating an open repository of “what works” from experimental research

Researcher: Betsy Levy Paluck (Professor), Meghan Testerman (Librarian)
Affiliated Department: Psychology, SPIA, Library


Princeton Geniza Lab historic documents database

Researcher: Marina Rustow (Professor)
Affiliated Department: History, Near Eastern Studies, Center for Digital Humanities


Methods and data for measuring propaganda and censorship in China

Researcher: Brandon Stewart (Assistant Professor), Dean Knox (Assistant Professor), Hannah Waight (Doctoral Student)
Affiliated Department: Sociology, Politics


Street police patrols and crime against women in public spaces: Experimental evidence from India

Researcher: Maria Micaela Sviatschi (Assistant Professor) and collaborators from UConn, Ifo Institute, World Bank
Affiliated Department: SPIA


The Person Project: A research platform for large-scale social science

Researcher: Diana Tamir (Assistant Professor), Nicole Shelton (Professor), Stacey Sinclair (Professor), Nickolas Jones (Postdoctoral Research Associate)n
Affiliated Department: Psychology, PNI


After the storm: Impact of hurricanes on employees and firms in the U.S.

Researcher: Michael Oppenheimer (Professor), Rachel Young (Doctoral Student), Alice Tianbo Zhang (Postdoctoral Research Associate)
Affiliated Department: Geosciences, SPIA