Hello! My name is Semra Sevi. I am a Banting postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, working with Donald Green.

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

Methodologically, my research leverages several quantitative approaches. I employ observational data, experiments, as well as causal inference designs. Before Columbia, I earned my PhD 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 between 1867-2019 in Canadian federal elections, which includes variables for unique id (identifies candidates), names of candidates, riding names, province, date of birth for all elected MPs, gender, occupation, occupation categories, party affiliation, party categories, switchers, incumbency status, vote shares and raw votes. 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.