Research

Start: January 2021

We propose to explore the relationship between ISP ownership and internet disruptions at times of political contestation in sub-Sahara and North Africa from 2016 until today, where countries show varying degrees of authoritarianism, economic development, and internet penetration. We develop a tool that allows to infer variance in ISP behavior at times of political contestation based on abnormal trends in the use popular circumvention services. To the end, we collaborate with Psiphon, one of the worldwide most-used free and open-source virtual private network (VPN) providers. VPN real-time usage data can shed light on the day-to-day contestation over access to internet services by indicating when users sought out uncensored content and censors adapted new methods to prevent this; it is still underutilized source for research thought. This novel approach to assess internet disruptions across ISPs and over time addresses current shortcomings in political science and computer science approaches to measure internet shutdowns both of which fails to provide systematic and reliable information at the level of ISPs.

Start: March 2021, HSG International Postdoctoral Fellowship

In this research project I analyze the role of policy signals and feedback effects at the case of the energy transition in Switzerland. I will build a new dataset by scraping the online archive of the Swiss commercial registry. With this data I can track firm entries, mutations and exits from 1883 until today and explore them in light of national and regional policy-making. In three work packages I study (1) the role of credible policy signaling to influence entrepreneurs’ expectations, (2) the relationship between historic agglomeration of firms and policymaking and (3) how ownership patterns of firms drive the energy transition.

Research questions