For three decades I’ve been a researcher, teacher, mentor, leader and communicator, in political science and data science, in the United States and Australia.

Born and raised in Australia, I moved to the US for doctoral studies at the University of Rochester and Princeton University, before two decades of academic appointments at the University of Chicago and Stanford University. I returned to Australia in 2015. I was the CEO and Professor of Political Science at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney for six years (2016-2022) where I am now an Honorary Professor. I am an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Society for Political Methodology.

I am an independent data scientist and strategist, with clients in politics, advocacy, media, academia and business.

My clients value my expertise in survey research, experimental design and analysis, statistical modelling, machine learning, natural language processing and data visualization. Solutions I provide include:

• Informing strategy: identifying targets of opportunity and vulnerabilities in political and commercial settings, optimal messaging and framing.

• Close to real-time tracking of voter/consumer/customer sentiment, combining information from disparate sources for best-in-class projections across small geographic areas; offering tactical, decision-support for election, advocacy or marketing campaigns.

• Helping clients bring data into their decision-making; advising on hiring, IT, and data collection, curation and dissemination across the enterprise.

• Bespoke modeling, simulation and forecasting.

• Expert witness reporting and testimony.

• Training and mentoring in data science, machine learning, and Bayesian statistics.

Current projects:

• small-area estimation: inferring public opinion at the level of parliamentary seats/districts, postcodes, local government areas etc, from macro-level data.

• machine-learning methods for classifying and modelling large corpora of text: identifying persuasive and persistent campaign messages and narratives, misinformation and disinformation, counter-narratives.

Download my CV .