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Department of Political Science

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Dr Kiran Arabaghatta Basavaraj

Kiran wears a suit and smiles into the camera
Research Fellow
Room: 2.03, 36-38 Gordon Square
Email: k.basavaraj@ucl.ac.uk

Biography

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computational Social Science, working on the UKRI-funded ‘Online Speech Project’ with Dr Jeffrey Howard.

I received my PhD in Advanced Quantitative Methods (AQM) and Master of Research (MRes) in AQM from the University of Exeter, both funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Prior to this, I graduated with a Master of Public Policy from the National Law School of India University, and a Bachelor of Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University. As a trained engineer, I initially worked in the software industry before joining academia.

I was a Junior Fellow for the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) in 2022, and I conducted an experiment to investigate the relationship between misinformation and electoral integrity.

I am a co-investigator on various projects, including the India Elections Study (IES) and the Meta (Facebook) Data Grant. Previously, I have worked on UKRI-funded projects studying traditional and social media, and the 2019 UK General Election.

Research

I am interested in interdisciplinary methodological approaches to addressing questions in the social sciences. Also, novel approaches to linking social media data with surveys.

More specifically, my research interests include: social media; misinformation; natural language processing (NLP); machine learning; experiments; public opinion research; polarization; and political campaigns and advertisements.

My work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Political Psychology and the Journal of Quantitative Description. My research has been presented at numerous conferences, including APSA, MPSA, PSA, WAPOR, WAPOR Asia, IJPP, and IEEE.

Publications

Journal articles