My name is Semra Sevi. I am a Banting postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. At Columbia, I work with Donald Green.

Broadly speaking, I am interested in political representation, the role of age, gender and immigration in politics, voting behaviour, voting systems, legislative politics, and methods.

Methodologically, my research leverages several quantitative approaches. I employ observational data, experiments, as well as causal inference designs. Before Columbia, I earned my PhD in Political Science at the Université de Montréal and my Honours BA and MA from the University of Toronto.

My dissertation focuses on two areas: descriptive representation, and how voters evaluate female candidates for office. To address these questions, I built the first comprehensive candidate-level dataset for elections since 1867 in Canadian federal elections, which includes variables for unique id (identifies candidates), names of candidates, riding names, unique identification number for each riding, province, date of birth, gender, occupation, occupation categories, party affiliation, party categories, switchers, incumbency status, vote shares, raw votes, indigenous origins, candidates who identify as a member of the LGBTQ2+ community and so on. Here is more information.

*If you are a first-generation student applying to political science Ph.D. programs or Canadian funded postdoctoral fellowships, I would be more than happy to discuss and give comments on your materials. I especially welcome applicants from underrepresented backgrounds.