Alexander Barron
Postdoctoral Associate
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BS University of New Mexico; PhD Indiana University
Research Areas: Culture; cultural evolution; computational social science; social physics; data science; complex systems
Alexander T. J. Barron is a Postdoctoral Associate in computational social science. His overarching research theme is the study of groups of individuals producing content, where the content itself serves as a focal point of attention and a binding principal for a group. He has a background in physics, complex systems, and informatics, focusing on large-scale, data-centric approaches to cultural creation and consumption. He has published work in PNAS, Nature Human Behavior, Scientific Reports, and JPhys: Complexity. His PNAS paper on innovation and influence in political speeches during the French Revolution won the 2018 Cozzarelli Prize in Behavioral and Social Sciences, one of six such yearly prizes reflecting "scientific excellence and originality" from the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Alexander is interested in research comprising multifaceted problems, as well as harnessing "green-field", unutilized data sets. All his work has benefited from integrating multiple points of view: history, sociology, physics, and computer science so far.