Welcome to the website of the Models, Experiments, and Data workshop (MEAD) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This workshop invites outside speakers, faculty members, and graduate students to present their work and receive feedback. If you’re interested in presenting at MEAD in the 2024-2025 academic school year, please contact the graduate student coordinator. If you would like to be added to the MEAD email list, please contact the graduate student coordinator.
Unless otherwise noted, our meetings are held in person (422 North Hall) on Fridays from 1:30 to 2:45pm.
Our workshop will be actively discussing the presentations and general methods research on the MEAD Slack workspace! If you submit a request to be added to the MEAD listserv, you will be invited to the MEAD Slack as well.
Faculty Directors
Jonathan Renshon (renshon@wisc.edu)
Graduate Student Coordinators
Yehzee Ryoo (yehzee.ryoo@wisc.edu)
What Styles of Presentations Do We Have?
(1) Practice Job Talks: 30-40 minutes presentation, followed by Q&A for 15 min, followed by feedback.
(2) Presentations:
“The Classic”: Similar to invited talks, presenters circulate a working paper and present a more detailed 30-40 minute talk after which there is audience Q&A. Discussants may be requested with enough advance notice.
“The In-Progress”: Designed to support in progress work – such as prospectuses or exploratory phases of projects, these do not require circulating work ahead of time, but are 20-30 minute presentations prefaced with specific requests on the types of feedback that would be most helpful to move the work forward. Q&A to follow.
“The EPW style”: This is primarily meant to support feedback for experimental designs. Presenters circulate a ~5 pg write up prior to the meeting, which attendees are expected to read and prepare comments for the author(s). No formal presentation expected. EPW-style sessions can host two presenters.
(3) Invited Speakers: 30-40 minutes presentation, followed by discussant comments, followed by Q&A.
Spring 2025
January 24: Cory McCartan (Statistics & Political Science, Penn State University)
Co-sponsor: Statistics department and DEJP
Title: "Estimating Racial Disparities When Race is Not Observed"
Discussant: Ajinkya Kokandakar
January 31: Ethan VanderWilden
Title: "License to Embrace History? Authoritarian Nostalgia Amid Radical Right Normalization"
February 7: Sameer Deshpande (Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Title: "Estimating heterogeneous causal effects with varying coefficient models and Bayesian Additive Regression Trees."
February 11 (Tuesday): Tyler Pratt (Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Co-sponsor: IRC
Title: "Smoke and Mirrors: Denials, Norm Challenges, and Contested Noncompliance."
Discussant: Yehzee Ryoo
February 14 : Xinran Miao (Statistics, UW-Madison)
February 21: Austin Wright (Public Policy, University of Chicago)
Co-sponsor: PEC and CPC
Title: "The Origins and Consequences of Territorial Control"
February 25: Rose McDermott (Brown University)
Co-sponsor: IRC and EPW and DEJP
Title: "Attitudes towards Gender Equality: Australia and New Zealand"
February 27: Vicky Fouka (Political Science, Stanford University)
Co-sponsor: PEC and CPC
Title: "Industry and Identity: The Migration Linkage Between Economic and Cultural Change in 19th Century Britain"
Discussant: Ethan VanderWilden
March 14: EPW pilot grant competition
March 21, 28: Spring break
April 17: John Ahlquist (School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego)
Co-sponsor: IRP and CPC
Title: "Welfare Capitalism on the Cheap? The Case of Employee Hardship Funds"
April 25: YangYang Zhou (Department of Government, Dartmouth College)
Location: Room L138 in the Education Building
Co-sponsor: CPC
Title: "Liberalizing Refugee Hosting without Losing the Vote"
Discussant: Norah-Frida Tebid
April 29 (Tuesday): Florian Foos (Department of Government, London School of Economics & Political Science)
Co-sponsor: CGES and JMEUCE
Title: "Do GOTV interventions really increase turnout inequality? A conceptual and empirical reassessment"
Discussant: Saloni Bhogale
FALL 2024
September 13: Introductions + Valeria Umanets, Yulia Khalikova, Marcy Shieh, and Alisher Juzgenbayev
2024-2025 MEAD mugs will be distributed to regular attendees at the workshop
September 20: Marty Davidson (Political Science, UW-Madison)
Title: "Strategic Point Processes"
(Thursday 12pm) September 26: Yiqing Xu (Political Science, Stanford)
Title: "Factorial Difference-in-Differences"
Discussant: Mingcong Pan
Co-sponsor: CPC
September 27: Priyadarshi Amar (Political Science, UW-Madison)
Co-sponsor: DEJP
(Wednesday) October 2: Tian Zheng (Statistics, Columbia)
133 Service Memorial Institute, 4 - 5 pm
Title: "Scalable Community Detection in Massive Networks using Aggregated Relational Data"
Co-sponsor: Statistics department
(Wednesday) October 2: Brandon Stewart (Sociology, Princeton)
Sterling Hall, conference room 1328, 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Co-sponsor: La Follette School of Public Affairs
(Thursday) October 3: Sven-Oliver Proksch (Political Science, University of Cologne)
Title: "Rise of the Radical Right and Government Formation: A Survey Experiment of Voters' Coalition Preferences"
Discussant: Ethan vanderWilden
Co-sponsor: CEU and CPC
October 4: Ethan vanderWilden, Saloni Boghale (Political Science, UW-Madison)
October 11: Matthew Blackwell (Government, Harvard)
Title: Assumption Smuggling in Intermediate Outcome Tests of Causal Mechanisms
Co-sponsor: Statistics and EPW
(Thursday) October 17: Nicholas Kuipers (Politics, Princeton)
Title: Frustrated Expectations, Time Horizons, and Trust in Elections
Co-sponsor: CPC and PEC
October 18: EPW Fall Pilot Grant Recap
November 8: Jonathan Renshon
Title: Pre-Analysis Plan for "Burning Bridges: The Double-Sided Dilemma of Reputation Concerns"
November 22: Job talk
November 29: Thanksgiving
(Thursday) December 5: Amanda Robinson (Political Science, Ohio State University)
Title: "Gender, Deliberation, and Natural Resource Governance: Experimental Evidence from Malawi"
Co-sponsor: CPC, PEC, and DEJP
December 6: MEAD end of semester poster-session + party
We are part of a rich network of workshops and colloquia: American Politics Workshop (APW), International Relations Colloquium (IRC), Comparative Politics Colloquium (CPC), Political Theory Workshop (PTW), Political Economy Colloquium (PEC), Experimental Politics Workshop (EPW), European Politics Workshop, Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP), and Latin American Colloquium (LAC), and Diversity, Equity, Justice and Power (DEJP).