New QSS faculty to start in Fall 2023

The Program in Quantitative Social Science is happy to announce that two new faculty members will be joining the program this coming fall.

Assistant Professor Elsa Voytas was a QSS post-doctoral fellow in the 2021-22 academic year at Dartmouth College. This academic year, she is an Assistant Professor in IE University's School of Political, Economic, and Global Affairs in Madrid, Spain. She is also currently a Visiting Scholar here at Dartmouth.  Dr. Voytas will be teaching QSS 15: Introduction to Data Analysis and QSS 30.18: Quantitative Approaches to Peace and Justice this coming year.

Dr. Voytas studies the ways societies address violent pasts and how policies they implement - such as constructing institutions of memory, establishing reparations for victims, and prosecuting accused perpetrators - can promote peace and recovery. She uses a variety of methodological approaches, including experiments, focus groups, and interviews. Her research has been published or accepted for publication in the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Peace Research, and the Oxford Handbook series.

Assistant Professor Ho-Chun (Herbert) Chang `18 is a Dartmouth alum who triple majored in Mathematics, Quantitative Social Science, and a Senior Fellowship in Creative Writing and completed a minor in English. Dr. Chang is finishing his doctorate from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California where he is also affiliated with the Information Science Institute. Dr. Chang works at the intersection of technology and democracy—such as online misinformation dynamics—and recently published papers on COVID-19 and the 2020 USA/Taiwanese Elections, the 2020 BLM Movement, inequality of mentorship networks, and sanctions on Russian oligarchs. Dr. Change has also spent time doing collaborative research with Meta, gaming companies, and non-profits.

About his plan to join QSS, Dr. Chang said, "I'm excited to teach QSS 20: Modern Statistical Computing. My principal goals are to help students develop a strong foundation in data science (suitable for further graduate study and industry) and discover a personal, social scientific core. As a QSS graduate myself, I can say the major is very effective. Beyond online politics, I'm recently very interested in the intersection of AI and artistic practice. If you are interested in doing research in computational social science, please reach out."

Please be sure to check our course schedule for the latest information and to see when our new professors are teaching their courses: QSS Course Schedule.