Hi, I’m Christine, a Dutch–English computational political scientist. I’m interested in how computational approaches can deepen the study of comparative politics, a theme that has run through my academic career to date:
2015-2018
I completed my BA at Erasmus University College in Rotterdam, double majoring in Political Science and Sociology, with a minor in Computer Science. During this period I developed an interest in computational approaches to social science, alongside substantive work on European politics.
2018-2020
I then pursued an MPhil in Politics (European Politics and Society) at the University of Oxford. For my master’s thesis I began working with machine learning and text-as-data methods, applying them to questions of coalition governance and institutional change in the Dutch parliament.
2020-2024
Continuing this line of work through a comparative lens, I then completed my DPhil in Politics at the University of Oxford also. My doctorate developed a machine classification pipeline to infer coalition governance negotiation dynamics from parliamentary speech.
2024-Present
As a research fellow with Centre for AI in Government at the University of Birmingham, I now expand this computational agenda toward artificial intelligence and large language models. I study political bargaining using multi-agent simulation, modelling political actors as interacting agents to explore coordination and bargaining processes that are otherwise difficult to observe directly. More details on my PhD research and current projects can be found on the research page.
The objective to marry computational methods with substantive political science continues to guide my research going forward. And when I’m not busy keeping up with the never-ending updates in the world of generative AI, I compete in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and, contrastingly, enjoy crocheting.
Christine Sheldon 