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.
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Email me at ashwinia@stanford.edu to say hello! I'd love to chat about research/academia/grad school/anything!