Howard Liu
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Social Science
Protests, conflicts and other collective actions rarely happen in isolation. Events spread from place to place over time.
- Fields
Social Science
Computer Science
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
collective action
political violence
protest
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop the GeoRDyn toolkit, combining AI, computer science and statistics to model the spatial and relational complexities of collective-action events in fine-grained data.
- Create methods for causal inference about how networks emerge and influence collective action across micro, meso and macro levels of actors.
- Build software to study how events diffuse across time and space, usable by researchers and non-academic analysts.
More about the research
They involve many actors, from individuals to organizations to whole states, and these actors influence one another through networks. Common analysis tools often treat events as static or independent, so they miss these spatial and relational links. This makes it hard to answer long-standing questions. How do networks form and shape collective action? Under what conditions do events diffuse across time and space?
Why it matters
Analysts often need to know why unrest or other collective events start and how they spread. Openly usable tools that capture spatial and network effects could help researchers and practitioners study these processes. Such tools could also help them anticipate the causes and possible consequences of such events. This may inform security and preparedness work.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Chloe Kessler
Cornell University, NY·Social Science
Identify what kinds of environmental futures extremist environmental groups seek and trace the historical precedents for those visions, using text analysis of online archival material and media analysis.
Janet Box-Steffensmeier
Ohio State University, OH·Social Science
Build the first comprehensive dataset cataloging the geographic origin, timing and issue areas of all writ of certiorari petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court cases.
Elizabeth Roberto
Rice University, TX·Social Science·Early-career
Measure how road network connectivity relates to residential spatial variation and proximity to local public services across U.S. cities, using spatial and network analysis of road networks and demographic data.
The school
University of South Carolina-Columbia: 22 labs on PI Pages, $277M a year on research, 425 research doctorates a year.
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