Newsletter featuring practitioner-in-residence Luke Jordan’s civic tech guide, an update on our anti-racism action plan, research on the pandemic, and more.
In planning its Covid-19 response, Sierra Leone needed to consider the needs of its most vulnerable citizens. Surveys conducted by the MIT Governance Lab and the Institute for Governance Reform tried to capture their voices.
April 2021
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Daniela Beltrame, Rodrigo Cordova-Ponce, Alisa Zomer
New exploratory research seeks to understand the relationship between people and government during the pandemic, specifically in informal contexts — conceived broadly as communities and activities existing and operating outside formal government regulations or legal frameworks.
Nicole Wilson, Phd Candidate and MIT GOV/LAB Graduate Research Fellow, discusses making progress on fieldwork during the pandemic, and shifting to online research methods.
Luke Jordan, MIT GOV/LAB practitioner-in-residence, shares a new project testing machine and transfer learning, text generation applications to the law.
Jordan talks about his guide for designing civic technology and his research into ways artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to advance democracy in the developing world.
Guillermo Toral PhD '20 finds health care quality drops in months leading up to mayoral elections, and if the incumbent loses, the quality continues to fall.
Our 2020 highlights, handpicked by the MIT GOV/LAB team, including how to receive friendly criticism, remote teaching on WhatsApp, applying research from Ebola to Covid-19, and more.
The MIT Communications Forum is sponsoring a panel on December 3rd to examine academia’s role in perpetuating institutional racism and efforts to change those systems. RSVP below.
November 2020
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Alisa Zomer, Innocent Ndubuisi-Obi Jr., Susy Tort
Newsletter featuring our latest research collaborations on engaged scholarship, information and accountability, behavioral science, civic technology, and more.
The lack of a centralized, up-to-date database of people in Nairobi’s informal economy and nepotism are hampering citizens’ access to government cash assistance, worsening economic hardships and frustrations.
Newsletter featuring our latest research collaborations on engaged scholarship, information and accountability, behavioral science, civic technology, and more.
The Committed to Caring program, an initiative of the Office of Graduate Education, published a profile of MIT GOV/LAB Faculty Director Lily Tsai honoring her commitment to graduate student mentorship.
MIT News featured an update on MIT GOV/LAB's project with the Institute for Governance Reform and the government of Sierra Leone to conduct rapid-response surveys to address Covid-19.
Newsletter featuring our latest research collaborations on engaged scholarship, information and accountability, behavioral science, civic technology, and more.
We conducted peer-led organizational learning assessments to support the Learning Collaborative, a civil society network focused on learning more systematically.
A recap of some of our favorite posts from 2019, including new field research, new partnerships, and a guide for difficult conversations between academic researchers and practitioners.
The fourth annual PBD conference featured judicial, urban, bureaucrat, and misinformation panels, along with workshops on dispute resolution and party worker recruitment. Graduate student research was highlighted at a poster session.
We are pleased to announce the four recipients including lead principal investigators Natalia Bueno; Tanushree Goyal; Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner; and Gwyneth McClendon, O’Brien Kaaba, and Elizabeth Sperber.
Guillermo Toral's graduate research "Unpacking Patronage: How the Different Political Uses of Public Employment Affect Government Accountability and Effectiveness" was featured in MIT News.
Tech innovation is supposed to be disruptive, but what does it mean for informal sector workers in developing cities? PhD candidate Ying Gao reflects on fieldwork in Indonesia.
Middlesex Sheriff's Office, Advocates, and MIT GOV/LAB launched a new pilot focused on improving reentry services for inmates at Middlesex Jail & House of Correction.
A quick look at the teams selected for MIT Solve's Community-Driven Innovation Challenge —technology solutions from Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, and Mexico.
One outcome of our strategic review is a renewed commitment to conducting rigorous research that is co-created by practitioners and grounded in local problems.
This summer MIT GOV/LAB is supporting five MIT Political Science graduate students to conduct original research in Senegal, Argentina, Indonesia, Ireland, and Vietnam.
In the learning spirit, we highlight five key questions that are emerging from our effort of knitting together a functional, meaningful learning network.
To build a stronger evidence base, MIT GOV/LAB is piloting an open call for research proposals on topics related to citizen engagement and government accountability in a diversity of contexts. August 31 deadline.
We are hosting the fourth annual Political Behavior of Development Conference (#PBD19) in Cambridge, MA on Friday, November 15, 2019 with a poster session the evening of November 14th.
Bringing together partners from the US (POPVOX) and South Africa (Grassroot), we tested a new format to co-develop metrics and civic technology in an iterative design process.
A recap of some of our favorite stories from 2018, featuring musings on trust, evidence use, and the responsibility of political scientists to create a more inclusive and accountable discipline.
We are convening a third annual PBD conference with panels and workshops on gender, violence, citizen-coordination, and political behavior. This year we also have a poster session featuring graduate student research.
Seed grant recipient and PhD student Apekshya Prasai reports back on qualitative research exploring women’s experiences during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal.
Political science doctoral candidate Nina McMurry navigates the archipelago, investigating the integration of indigenous communities into the nation's political institutions.
Uncut scenes from field work in Jharkhand and Bihar, India and supporting research with Video Volunteers and Professor Gabi Kruks-Wisner (MIT PhD ‘13) from the University of Virginia.
Our partner Dejusticia brought together eighteen young human rights defenders from the Global South to learn new skills, build community, and take a break.
We are excited to welcome our newest Research Support Associate! Read below how Siena’s childhood in Mexico and interest in anthropology led her to political science research at MIT.
PRESS RELEASE: MIT GOV/LAB will serve as a research collaborator to evaluate a pilot re-entry project focusing on mental health and co-occurring substance use disorders with the Middlesex Sheriff's Office.
Report back from the Program on Governance and Local Development’s (GLD) Second Annual Conference at the University of Gothenburg, May 31-June 1, 2018.
We are hosting the third annual Political Behavior of Development Conference (#PBD18) in Cambridge, MA on Friday, November 9, 2018 with a poster session the evening of November 8th.
Following up on our Making All Voices Count research, a look at how a newly-trained community leader engaged in recent local elections in the Philippines.
MIT GOV/LAB is excited to join the Learning Collaborative as a resource organization working with practitioners on transparency, participation, and accountability.
Bringing together legal strategies and data science, ACLU Massachusetts presented at our seminar series on one of the largest criminal justice scandals in Bay State history.
Professor Lily Tsai’s seminal work on China was featured in connection with President Xi’s consolidation of power and the end of presidential term limits.
Our Data Science to Solve Social Problems series continues with Jake Porway on how DataKind uses data science and artificial intelligence to empower civic society and drive government transparency and accountability.
PhD student Stuart Russell partners with Accountability Lab Mali to explore the incentives bureaucrats face in Mali's civil service with support from a GOV/LAB seed grant.
A recap of our favorite stories from 2017 covering lessons from the field, corruption in politics, data science and health care, and mystery shopping as told by our top-notch research team.
Bayes Impact’s Mehdi Jamei presented new tools looking at access to healthcare in California at GOV/LAB’s Data Science to Solve Social Problems seminar series.
BWGAPE attendees heard a keynote from Harvard Professor Robert Bates, workshopped three papers in progress, and voted on the most compelling 'hack-a-thon' presentation.
As part of our Data Science to Solve Social Problems series, Facebook Data Scientist Winter Mason presented on efforts to increase online civic engagement.
GOV/LAB's Data Science to Solve Social Problems seminar series starts again this semester with Winter Mason from Facebook's Civic Engagement Research Team – Nov 13th. RSVP below.
We convened a second annual PBD conference on what determines citizen expectations of the state, support for justice, electoral and nonelectoral participation, and bureaucratic behavior.
The winning website, Ciudadano Contigo, provides first-ever online access to local government welfare programs and eligibility information for Mexican citizens.
Can training citizens and government officials together create a more constructive relationship between the two key stakeholders? Reporting back from the field on the building blocks of good local governance.
GOV/LAB intern Siena Harlin (Wellesley ‘18) reports back on clientelistic culture in Mexican government from two months of fieldwork in Yucatán, Mexico
PhD candidate Loreto Cox reports back on the results of her GOV/LAB seed project examining the political effects of expected vs. actual returns to higher education.
According to Boston Police and ACLU of Massachusetts, over 72,000 people in Boston were stopped and frisked between 2008 and 2013. With a text and a tweet, Team Friskers hopes to bring awareness to this issue.
We are excited to welcome our latest team member, Dante Delaney (MIT '16). Read more below about Dante’s path from The Bahamas to MIT to GOV/LAB below.
Nearly 40 people showed up for the hack on April 21-22. Hack organizers, Leah Rosenzweig and Alex Meyer, provide the play-by-play and hack highlights below.
MIT GOV/LAB is organizing We the People / Hack for Democracy to demonstrate MIT’s deep commitment to core American (and human) values of fairness, equality, and openness. April 21 & 22. RSVP below!
How can big data be leveraged to improve government? We report back evidence from the 2017 Winter Innovation Summit on the U.S. criminal justice system.
GOV/LAB's Data Science to Solve Social Problems seminar series continues with Kelly Jin from the White House Office of Science, Technology and Policy - December 2. RSVP below.
GOV/LAB is kicking off a seminar series on Data Science to Solve Social Problems. Our first seminar is November 1st with Jeff Larson, Data Editor at ProPublica. RSVP below.
We are hosting a conference Friday, October 28, 2016 examining issues of racial and intergroup relations, determinants of political participation, partisanship and mobilization as well as the influence of informal institutions and elites on attitudes and behaviors.
GOV/LAB intern, Carly Gottorff, takes a stab at creating a first of its kind data set looking at the spatial relationship between armed rebel groups and humanitarian aid worldwide.
MIT GOV/LAB and Twaweza interviewed 1,200 Ugandans after national elections to understand how citizens conceptualize politics and make voting decisions.
Can election debates aimed at youth voters help activate the largest, nascent voting block in Uganda? Twaweza and Youth Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda organized #WhatWouldYouthDo political debates to engage youth voters.
Youth make up the majority of Uganda’s population, yet account for a very small percentage of those who vote. What factors contribute to this disengagement?
How do ordinary Tanzanian citizens see politics and government? What do Tanzanian citizens think of as “engagement” and “participation” in politics? How do citizens interact with parties and political elites?
We presented at the World Bank's Annual Bank Conference on Africa (ABCA) about our research findings from our project, Trust and Cooperation in the Fight Against Ebola.
We spoke at the Method Matters in Civic Engagement--But How? panel during the South by Southwest 2015 conference about civic tech in the United States.
