Quantitative Researcher

I’m seeking a quantitatively skilled research collaborator for interdisciplinary projects examining mass incarceration, gun violence, racial inequality, policing, surveillance, immigration enforcement, and the historical development of the American state.

I’m a legal historian and interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar interested in challenging conventional understandings of crime, violence, punishment, and the American gun debate. My work combines historical research, legal archives, government data, and critical approaches to race and state power.

A central aim is to uncover information obscured by aggregate statistics, official classifications, and familiar narratives about social problems. By examining underlying data, historical records, and the categories institutions use to describe populations, this research seeks to recover overlooked patterns, question established assumptions, and explore what the evidence can—and cannot—tell us.

• Historical reconstruction and mass incarceration: Recovering overlooked patterns in government data and examining the development of punishment and state enforcement.
• Public safety, gun violence, and surveillance: Investigating how violence, dangerousness, and public safety are understood, including the relationships among policing, surveillance technologies such as Flock cameras, and racial geography.
• Race and the social reproduction of difference: Exploring stereotyping, social perception, threat, stigma, and how social differences acquire institutional and material consequences.
• Immigration and state power: Historical research on INS, DHS, ICE, immigration enforcement, surveillance, and detention.

These areas reflect a broader intellectual agenda; specific projects and unpublished findings can be discussed privately.

The ideal collaborator brings strong quantitative skills, intellectual curiosity, and an interest in rigorous, socially engaged research.

Relevant backgrounds include statistics, data science, computer science, sociology, criminology, demography, political science, geography, public policy, social psychology, and related fields.

Experience with R, Python, ArcGIS, administrative data, survey microdata, statistical modeling, or mixed-methods research would be valuable. The primary need is quantitative expertise: auditing analyses, checking mathematical assumptions, improving models, conducting sensitivity analyses, and developing defensible estimates of uncertainty. Qualitative coding and historical research skills are useful additions.

Prior criminal legal research experience is not required. Graduate students, doctoral candidates, independent researchers, and established scholars are welcome, especially those interested in applying their expertise to questions they have not previously had the opportunity to explore.

Curiosity is essential. I value researchers who challenge assumptions, listen to affected communities and social movements, distinguish findings from speculation, and continually ask what merits further investigation.

Contributions could range from a focused methodological consultation to a deeper intellectual partnership, with opportunities for coauthored scholarship based on substantive contributions.

Preliminary funding is available for a limited collaboration, with potential to pursue additional funding as the work develops. Scope and expectations would be established together.

The broader ambition is to uncover what conventional accounts leave out, strengthen what we can responsibly claim from the evidence, and develop new ways of understanding the institutions and social relations that shape people's lives.