CURRENT ROLE
Professor of Political Science and Principal’s Research Chair
Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science | University of British Columbia (Okanagan campus) | Syilx Okanagan Nation TerritoryAssociate Editor, Political Research Quarterly
Member, Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists
EDUCATION
Ph.D
University of California, San Diego, 2008
Field of Study: Political Science
Dissertation: “Centralizing Principles: How Amnesty International Shaped Human Rights Politics through its Transnational Network.”M.A.
University of California, San Diego, 2004B.A.
University of California, Berkeley, 2002
Political Science with Distinction
Research areas and select publications
Governance of Emerging Technologies group (GET)
This is an inter-disciplinary research group based at UBC, Okanagan. We work on interesting questions pertaining to technology, politics, society, and culture. GET's three main themes are: law, norms, and values of emerging technologies. We partner with Dr. Stefan Kehlenbach at the University of Albany. The PhD student on the project is Michael Monclou.
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“We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age”. MIT Press. 2023.
Stefan Kehlenbach, "The Techno-Pessimists: Twain, Adorno, and Mbembe" . Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2023.
Stefan Kehlenbach, Valerie Kindarji, and Alexandra Martin, "Designing the Digital Citizen: Digital Literacy and Neoliberal Responsibilization", Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2023.
"Ethics or Power? Alternative Frameworks for Regulating AI" (with E. Stefan Kehlenbach). Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2023.
“Platform Sovereigns: Contact Tracing Applications and the Power of Big Tech", (with Jamie Duncan, Valerie Kindarji, and Alexandra Martin), American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2022.
"Why Data Are Hard to Govern", (with Jamie Duncan and David A. Lake), International Studies Association Annual Meeting, 2022 and 2023.
“We Haven’t Gone Paperless Yet: Why the Printing Press Can Help Us Understand Data and AI” (with Julian Posada and Nicholas Weller). Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence/Association for Computing Machinery, Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society (AIES) conference. 2021.
Human Rights
Human rights protect human potential. Since the end of World War II, the global framework for human rights has existed in many forms: law, norms, and struggles to protect more aspects of human life. What encourages the protection of rights, and what inhibits their spread? Today, with the advent of data-intensive technologies, we face some of the biggest challenges with what we “know” about protecting minimal standards for human life, and what changes we need to account for as our physical and digital lives become indistinguishable.
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“What COVID-19 Revealed about Health, Human Rights, and the WHO” (with Eileen A. Wong). Journal of Human Rights 19 (5): 568-581. 2020.
“Did the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Reduce Child Mortality Around the World? An Interrupted Time Series Analysis” (with Christopher A. Tait, Abtin Parnia, Nishan Zewege-Abubaker, Heather Smith-Cannoy, and Arjumand Siddiqi). BMC Public Health 20 (1): 707. 2020.
“When Everyone Agrees: Human Rights Norms on Women and Children and their Effects on Health” (with Heather Smith-Cannoy, Arjumand Siddiqi, Christopher Tait, and Abtin Parnia). The International Journal of Human Rights 24 (10): 1537-1571. 2020.
“Can the Health Effects of Widely-Held Societal Norms be Evaluated? An Analysis of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (UN-CEDAW)” (with Christopher A. Tait, Ifrah Abdillahi, Heather Smith-Cannoy, and Arjumand Siddiqi). BMC Public Health 19: 279-289. 2019.
“Mind the Understanding Gap: New Directions in Research on Human Rights.” Journal of Human Rights 18 (5): 619-624. 2019.
Civil Society and Governance
The Governance Constellations project is a SSHRC Insight Grant funded collaboration with Dr. Danielle F. Jung (Emory University), Dr. Amanda Murdie (University of Georgia), and Dr. Allison Cuttner that explains the multiple sources of governance in human societies. Non-state actors normally engage in the delivery of governance as goods and services to citizens. By using survey work and case studies in areas such as education and waste management, we will show how evaluations of effectiveness and legitimacy hinge on many factors that political science's focus on institutions leaves out. The PhD student on this project is Alexandra Yao. The book from this project is under contract with Cornell University Press.
GRNDS (The Global Register of Nonprofit Data Sources) helps us understand how global civil society organizations are regulated in their respective states. Unlike other data, this cross-national dataset allows us to compare how much data countries collect and release publicly. Collaborative project with Dr. Elizabeth Bloodgood (Concordia University), Dr. Sarah S. Stroup (Middlebury College), and Ajah.
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"Breaking Free from the State: Theorizing Governance Constellations," (with Allison Cuttner, Danielle F. Jung, and Amanda Murdie), American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2022.
“Strategic Philanthropy and International Strategies: The Ford Foundation and Investments in Law Schools and Legal Education, 1951-2003” (with Ron Levi and Ronit Dinovitzer). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2022.
“Understanding National Nonprofit Data Environments” (with Elizabeth Bloodgood, Jesse Bourns, Michael Lenczner, Takumi Shibaike, and Jenny Tabet.) Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 2022.
“What Counts? How to use Different Sources of NGO Data” (with Elizabeth Bloodgood and Sarah S. Stroup). Voluntas. 2021.
“The Stories They Tell: What INGO Mission Statements Reveal about their Authority” (with Takumi Shibaike, Sarah S. Stroup, and Alfred Oduro). Global Society: 1-28. 2021.
