Britt Cartrite

 Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder (2003) Student of Sven Steinmo Dissertation focused on the dynamics of the politicization of ethnic identity in Western Europe  Had nothing to do with agent-based modeling  Post-doctoral fellow, Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnic Conflict, University of Pennsylvania (2004-5) Began working with Ian Lustick and Dan Miodownik on models of ethnic conflict using PS-I Became interested in both the theoretical underpinnings and application of agent-based modeling Disclaimer: I have no formal computer coding background, only “hands-on” training!

 Interested in the impact of limited information (bounded rationality) and information flows on macro-level outcomes Particularly interested in how political structures interact with and perform against such dynamic social models  Initial work with Lustick, “Virtualstan,” tested theories of authoritarian regime stability under a very large variety of individual and social conditions The type of authoritarian regime matters (somewhat surprising) Regime collapse occurs very differently depending on regime type (very surprising)

 Work with Miodownik on political decentralization and ethnopolitical mobilization Empirical literature reaches opposite conclusions:  Decentralization exacerbates mobilization  Decentralization ameliorates mobilization Our findings:  the relationship is curvilinear (in some sense combining the two empirical results)  The cause of this divergence is the impact of decentralization on ethnic identity salience and subsequent mobilization

 With Miodownik and Bhavnani: Exploring model replication versus model docking Attempted to replicate an earlier Bhavnani model of Putnam’s work on civil society in Italy using different hardware and software

 Most recent advances: using GIS to build models: