[UPDATE: Starting Fall 2023, I will join NYU Psychology as an Assistant Professor. If you are interested in joining my lab as a PhD student, please send me an email with your interests. Information on how to apply can be found here.]
I am a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Polarization and Social Change Lab (PASCL) at Stanford University directed by Dr. Robb Willer. I got my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, where I worked with Dr. Bill Swann and Dr. Jamie Pennebaker. I am interested in understanding how social and political identities help (or harm) the realization of two democratic ideas: (i) political deliberation and discussion, and (ii) social cohesion. My recent work studies technologically mediated environments to illuminate the ways in which identity processes impact democracy in the digital age. I leverage theory-driven application of multiple methods including lab and field experiments, natural language processing, and big data analysis to study these processes in both controlled and natural settings. I recently co-led The Pandemic Project, which attempts to track the social psychological impacts of the current COVID outbreak. Check out blog posts about our research findings here. I am also part of the team that built the newly launched text analysis program, LIWC-22. Check it out and send us your feedback! Before discovering the world of social psychology and research, I was a developer at Microsoft and a Young India Fellow. Email me at ashwinia@stanford.edu to say hello! I'd love to chat about research/academia/grad school/anything! |