Meet John Ternovski, 2020 APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grantee

The American Political Science Association is pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) Awardees for 2020. The APSA DDRIG program provides support to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation research in political science. Awards support basic research which is theoretically derived and empirically oriented.

John Ternovski, Yale University

John Ternovski is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. His research is broadly focused on causal inference and persuasion, especially in the context of large-scale social networks. His dissertation investigates how new technologies causally impact political behavior and sentiments—particularly, how do new modes of information-dissemination and persuasion affect ordinary people? His research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Political Behavior, Electoral Studies, and Social Networks.  

Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School at the Student Social Support R&D Lab, a lab specializing in large-scale field experiments in education. Prior to that, he served as the Director of Analytics at the Analyst Institute, a company that designed, implemented, and analyzed large-scale field experiments for a variety of major non-profits and campaigns. He has also worked as a freelance data and analytics consultant.

He holds an MA in Statistics from Yale, an MSc in Social Science of the Internet from Oxford University, and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College.