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 2026-2027 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
Anton Strezhnev (strezhnev@wisc.edu)
Graduate Student Coordinator
Tatiana Cruz (tdacruz@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.
FALL 2026
September 4: No meeting (APSA)
September 11: Introductions
September 18: Yehzee Ryoo (UW-Madison)
Moral Politics of War: Intentionality, Vulnerability, and Public Support.
September 25: Saloni Bhogale (UW-Madison)
The Political Roots of Legal Access: Evidence from Village Councils in India
Co-sponsored by the Diversity, Equity, Justice and Power (DEJP) Lecture Series
October 2: Anton Strezhnev (UW-Madison)
"Omitted variable bias sensitivity analysis with clustered treatment assignment"
October 9: Bikram Karmakar (UW-Madison)
"Random Effects Meta-Analysis When the Studies Use Multiple Regression Models With Different Sets of Covariates"
October 16: Experimental Politics Workshop (EPW) Pilot Grant Presentations
October 23: Andy Halterman (Michigan State University)
"What Is a Protest, Anyway? Conceptualization, Codebook Compliance, and Bias Correction in LLM-Based Measurement”
Co-sponsored by the McNair Scholars Program
October 30: Laura Hatfield (NORC)
"Generalizing program impacts estimated by difference-in-differences to new populations”
November 6: Experimental Politics Workshop (EPW)
"What's in a Name? The Consequences of Democratic Labels for Rebel Groups” - Sloane Ward
"Aligning Support and Action: A Framework for Inclusionary Interventions" - Adeline Lo & Tatiana Cruz
“The Influence of Elected Leaders’ Communication in a Fragmented Information Environment” – Cody-Ann Lyn, Ellie Powell, & Andrew Trexler
November 13: Joe Ornstein (University of Georgia)
November 20: Midwest Workshop in Empirical Political Science (MidWEPS)
November 27: No meeting (Thanksgiving)
December 4: Graduate Student Poster Session
SPRING 2027
January 29: Zhanyang Liu (UW-Madison)
February 5: Luca Locher (ETH Zurich)
February 12: Nastya Andreeva (UW-Madison)
Topic: The Case of Echo Chambers: Examining User Sensitivity to Social Media Company Efforts to Depolarize Platforms
February 19: Hyunseung Kang (UW-Madison, Statistics)
February 26: Tara Slough (NYU)
March 1: Don Green (Yale)
With American Politics Workshop (APW)
March 12: EPW Pilot Grant Competition
March 19: TBD
March 26: No meeting (Spring Break)
April 2: No meeting (MPSA)
April 3: No meeting (Spring Break)
April 9: Michelle Torres (UCLA)
April 16: Chris Fariss (University of Michigan)
April 23: TBD
April 30: Molly Offer-Westort (University of Chicago)
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).