Computational Social Science and Public Policy Colloquium Series

Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth College) will give a talk for the Computational Social Science and Public Policy Colloquium. The Colloquium brings leading researchers and practitioners to The University of Chicago to talk about how they're using data, computation, and social science to understand and improve the world. 

About the Speaker:

Brendan Nyhan is a Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. His research, which focuses on misperceptions about politics and health care, has been published in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Medical Care, Pediatrics, Political Analysis, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, Social Networks, and Vaccine. (His publications and working papers are listed below; see his curriculum vitae or Google Scholar profile for more.)

Nyhan received his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University in 2009 and served as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 2009-2011.

He is a contributor to The Upshot at The New York Times (March 2014-) and a co-founder of Bright Line Watch (January 2017-). He previously served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review (November 2011-February 2014). Nyan also blogs at brendan-nyhan.com and tweets at @BrendanNyhan. He's been called "one of the most thought-provoking writers about politics on the web", "[o]ne of the smartest sources on 2016, the media, and electoral trends", one of "a new breed of conscientious political science bloggers" who are "creating reputational hazards to seat-of-the-pants punditry," and a "political science shaolin warrior".

From 2001-2004, Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Nyhan edited Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin that was syndicated in Salon (2002) and the Philadelphia Inquirer (2004). In 2004, we published All the President's Spin, a New York Times bestseller that Amazon.com named one of the ten best political books of the year.

Previously, Nyhan was a marketing and fundraising consultant for Benetech, a Silicon Valley technology nonprofit, and Deputy Communications Director of the Bernstein for US Senate campaign in Nevada. He grew up in Mountain View, CA and attended Swarthmore College.

Questions? Please contact jtwalsh@uchicago.edu.