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. 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.
Aiden McIlvaney is the DemoTIP Lab Manager and an M.A. student in Political Science at McGill University. His research examines political behaviour & public opinion, political uses of technology, electoral governance, and cyber threats targeting democratic institutions, with a methodological focus on survey experiments and causal inference. He holds a SSHRC CGS-M and an FRQ Master’s Research Scholarship, and is a 2026–2027 CIGI Digital Policy Hub Fellow. His current work focuses on Canadian public attitudes towards the use of AI in electoral campaigns and attitudes towards the use of AI in defence and security.
Alan Nemirovski is an M.A. student in Political Science at McGill University, supported by an FRQSC master’s scholarship. He is interested in how emerging technologies and current issues in digital governance are changing political life and participation, from individuals to their social networks. Drawing on an interdisciplinary social sciences background, he approaches these questions with a methodological toolkit ranging from computational methods and statistical techniques to interpretive approaches.
Gavriil Fakih is an M.A. student in Political Science at McGill University, supervised by Aaron Erlich. His main interests are quantitative and computational methods. He uses text analysis to study Russian influence operations, disinformation, and political identity in the former Soviet Union. He builds reproducible pipelines for scraping and analysing large social media datasets. He is also interested in how states use persuasion and coercion, and how political narratives shape public attitudes towards defence and security. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Jesus College, Oxford. His undergraduate thesis used a neural topic model to study Russian strategic frames during Moldova’s 2024 elections and won the Gibbs Thesis Prize in Politics. He is a member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship. gavriilfakih.com
Lauren Avis is an M.A. student in Political Science specializing in Development Studies at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development. Her research spans Russian and post-Soviet politics and history, information warfare, political polarization, leftist organizing, women’s issues, and technology’s role in society. She approaches these issues both distinctively and as connected by questions of power, ideology, and how information shapes political life and activity. She is a 2026–2027 CIGI Digital Policy Hub Fellow, a Student Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Global Security (MIGS) and affiliated with the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS).
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 worked with me closely. The research and publications listed 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.
Former lab members — if you need a letter of recommendation years after the fact, you’re still in the rotation. Start at the Letter of Recommendation page.
Show / hide alumni table (click any column to sort)
| Researcher | Degree | Graduation Year | Publications & Research | Post-McGill Employment / Education |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rafael Campos-Gottardo | M.A. | 2025 | Thesis - The Impact of Political Violence on Levels of Polarization: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in the United Kingdom | |
| 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 | Ph.D student, Yale University |
| Christopher 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 | 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 | M.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. | 2022 | Unveiling | Assistant Prof (Research), McGill University |
| Tim Roy | B.A. |