DemoTIP Laboratory

Democracy, Transparency, Information Provision, and Participation

Bringing together researchers interested in transparency, information provision, and participation (TIP), the DemoTIP laboratory applies state of the art research methods to bring answers to empirical problems in political science. Lab members test and challenge conventional theories regarding political transparency and accountability, the provision of political information, and citizen participation in democratic processes. Email if you are interested in getting involved!

Principal Investigator

Aaron Erlich is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University’s political. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2016. His wide-ranging research interests touch upon various themes such as democracy, political participation, the effect of information, and the development and use of advanced quantitative methods. His research has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and many others.

McGill Graduate & Post-Doc Researchers

David Dubé is a PhD candidate in Political Science at McGill University, interested in the informal political economy of post-communist Europe and Eurasia and the relationship between (mis)information, beliefs, and political behaviour in democratic, hybrid and authoritarian regimes. As a graduate student, David developed a growing interest in using statistical methods for causal inference and machine learning (natural language processing & computer vision) for large datasets and complex data analysis.

Rafael Campos-Gottardo  is an M.A. student in political science at McGill University. His thesis examines the effect of partisan violence on levels of affective polarization in the United Kingdom. He is also interested in using casual inference techniques to study the consequences of affective polarization on democracy in a comparative context.  He has worked with Professor Erlich on several Ukrainian survey-data-related project.                                                                                                 

Katerina McMullen is an M.A. student in Political Science at McGill University. Her research focuses on the socio-political analysis of large language models. Her thesis is assessing how LLMs handle and respond to queries about the US election when confronted with misleading or false information. She was awarded funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for that project.

McGill Undergraduate Researchers

Lawrence Plastina is a third-year undergraduate student double majoring in political science and statistics. He was one of 29 recipients of McGill’s 2024 Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Award, using quantitative methods to study Ukrainian self-reported firearm ownership under Prof. Erlich’s supervision

DemoTIP Alumni

These students are students who worked with me closely. The research and publications are just those completed with me during their time affiliated with the lab. For prospective students, this table gives you a good sense of the types of students who work with me.

Researcher	Degree	Graduation Year	Publications & Research	Post-McGill Employment/Education
Mathieu Lavigne	Ph.D.	2024	Thesis - Resilient? Perceptions, Spread, and Impacts of Misinformation in the New Political Information Environment	Post-Doc Dartmouth College
Pratik Mahajan	M.A.	2024	Thesis - Ideological Transformation After Patron Cooptation? The Resilience of Ethno-Clientelist Ties Amid Hindu Nationalism in a Scheduled Tribe Constituency in India
Christoper Ross	M.A.	2023	Thesis - Elite Framing and Carbon Pricing: An Experiment in Embracing Expert Consensus Unveiling: An Unexpected Mid-campaign Court Ruling’s Consequences and the Limits of Following the Leader	The Media Ecosystem Observatory
Alice Brocheux	B.A.	2022		Ph.D. Student University of Rochester
Costin Ciobanu	Ph.D.	2022	Thesis - The political and electoral consequences of economic shocks Unveiling: An Unexpected Mid-campaign Court Ruling’s Consequences and the Limits of Following the Leader	Post-Doc Royal Holloway University Post-doc University of Aarhus
Dilse Kaygisiz	M.A.	2022	Thesis - Do laws affect attitudes? A study on domestic violence laws in Turkey	Data Sciences
Henry Atkins	M.A.	2021	Thesis - Do Right-Wing Terror Attacks Change Minds about Out-groups? Evidence from the 2018 Macerata Attack
Stefano Dantas	M.A.	2021	Multi-Label Prediction for Political Text-as-Data
Étienne Gagnon	M.A.	2020	Thesis - Multiview Representation Learning for Political Science Research	MEXT Fellowship Japan - Ph.D. Student, Princeton University
Saewon Park	M.A.	2020	Weaponizing Election Petitions Thesis - When Aid is not a Reward : Diaspora Activism and Democracy Aid Allocation	TrackTik The Media Ecosystem Observatory
Tanner Ducharme	B.A.	2020
Alex Xin Tong Wang	M.A.	2020
Hair Parra Barrera	B.A.	2020		M.A. - HEC-Montréal
Su Goh	B.A.	2020
Annie Chen	B.A.	2020	Thesis - Incumbency Advantage in Australia Discriminatory Immigration Bans Elicit Anti-Americanism in Targeted Communities: Evidence from Nigerian Expatriates	Bright Line Watch
Andrew McCormack	M.A.	2019	mapcan R package Thesis - Contextual Determinants of Policy Preferences: Local-Level Economic Inequality and Public Opinion in the US	Data Sciences
Aengus Bridgman	Ph.D.		Unveiling: An Unexpected Mid-campaign Court Ruling’s Consequences and the Limits of Following the Leader	Assistant Prof (Research) McGill University
Tim Roy	B.A.