Michele Claibourn
Director of Community-Centered Analysis
Background
Michele has been a social scientist, data scientist, community-engaged scholar, faculty member, and administrator for over 20 years.
As the Director of Community-Centered Analysis, Michele leads the Center’s community-engaged data science work in support of a more just region. Through her faculty appointment in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where she teaches classes on Equitable Policy and Public Interest Data, she works to connect the developing data and policy expertise of UVA students to the community. With the School of Data Science, where she holds a courtesy appointment, she has co-developed a Community Data Fellows program.
Prior to joining the Center for Community Partnerships and Batten, she founded and led the StatLab, teaching courses and workshops on computational text analysis, applied causal inference, data wrangling, and machine learning. She established and directed Research Data Services in the UVA Library.
Research
Michele's Political science research has centered on citizen capacity and mechanisms of accountability in democratic systems. She has published a book, Presidential Campaigns and Presidential Accountability (University of Illinois Press 2011), and articles in The Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Political Communication, Political Behavior, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and PNAS.
Her community-centered research seeks to support the use of research and data to promote government accountability, civil society, and collective resident power and advocacy.
Education
- Ph.D. 2002 University of Wisconsin-Madison, Political Science/Methodology
- M.A. 1995 University of Wisconsin-Madison, Political Science
- B.A. 1993 Rice University, Political Science