Education

My undergraduate education took place at the London School of Economics, and I graduated in 2000 with a BSc in Government and Economics. In 2001, I received a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy, also from LSE.

From 2001 through 2003, I was a student at Nuffield College, Oxford.

I joined the University of Rochester, Department of Political Science as a graduate student in Fall 2003. I defended my dissertation in Spring 2008.

Career and Service

From 2008 to July 2012 I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 2012 until 2015, I was the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences. I was affiliated with IQSS.

I joined New York University as an Associate Professor of Politics and Data Science in July 2015. In October 2015, I joined the steering committee of the Moore-Sloan grant at NYU, as chair of the working group on Education and Training. I was also the university faculty lead for 'text-as-data' under the Moore-Sloan grant, and I coordinated the Text-as-Data seminar series as part of my responsibilities. From 2016 to 2022, I served as the Deputy Director of the Center for Data Science, and the Director of Graduate Studies for the MSDS prorgam.

In July 2023, I joined Princeton University as the Class of 1987 Professor of Politics. At Princeton, I currently serve on the executive committee of Data-Driven Social Science, and on the executive committee of Princeton Language + Intelligence. I am also a member of the advisory board of the Data Science Institute at LSE.

My Erdos Number is 4
(Spirling >> David Firth >> David V. Hinkley >> Ronald L. Graham >> Erdos).

Awards

In Spring 2012, I was very honored to be one of the four winners of Harvard University's Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award

I was delighted to win the "Emerging Scholar" best paper award from the European Political Science Association for work with Andy Eggers in 2013.

In 2014, it was a great pleasure and honor to receive one of two Roselyn Abramson Awards given to a junior professor at Harvard "in recognition of his or her excellence and sensitivity in teaching undergraduates."

In 2018, I won the Society for Political Methodology's "Emerging Scholar" award, which "honors a young researcher, within ten years of their degree, who is making notable contributions to the field of Political Methodology." Citation here.

CV/Resume/Google Scholar

Click here for a copy of my CV (in pdf).

Click here for my Google scholar page.