I am a Professor in the departments of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University and presently an Associate Editor at the American Journal of Political Science. I study the theoretical determinants of collective action in contexts as diverse as political violence and terrorism, elections, and opinion and identity formation. As part of that, I have recently started studying theoretically-informed measurement as well. My research has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics, as well as in a pair of books from Princeton University Press. Prior to coming to Duke, I was on faculty at Florida State University. Before that I got my Ph.D. from Stanford University‘s Graduate School of Business, and before that I studied physics.
My CV is here. Click on Research, above, for links to all my academic publications. You can also check me out on Google Scholar or on Scholars@Duke. I can sometimes be found on Bluesky at @daveasiegel.bsky.social. If you’re interested in my blog posts or media appearances, you can find links here. If you are in the media and interested in talking about any of the topics I research, please contact me via e-mail.
I typically teach classes on terrorism, game theory, network analysis, and research methods of various sorts. I also actively advise students. You can find details of each by Clicking on Teaching or Advising, respectively. I’ve co-written a book on mathematics for social scientists and produced a full set of (free) video lectures, problem sessions, and problem sets to go along with the book. You can find links to the book and all video course material off the Teaching link. Also off that link are links to an online version of the Intro to Empirical Methods course I’ve taught for the past few years as part of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute.
I co-organize a yearly Behavioral Models of Politics Conference with Jon Woon at Pitt that is intended to encourage communication among those exploring models of politics that bring in insights from the vast literature on individual behavior. You can check out some past programs at their websites here, here, and here.
