I am a professor at the Université de Montréal in the Department of Political Science and a visiting researcher at Mila - Quebec AI Institute. My research is primarily focused on data science, AI, and machine learning. I also have an interest in legislative institutions and comparative political development. I am currently Director of the Big data analysis undergraduate program at the Université de Montréal.

Political Polarization, Disinformation, and Text as Data

My most recent work studies political polarization and the spread of misinformation in online societies with the Complex Data Lab. Directed by Reihaneh Rabbany, the lab’s goal is to develop methodologies for analyzing complex datasets by leveraging techniques in large language models, graph mining, as well as unsupervised and supervised learning. Our interdisciplinary research initiatives bring together a group of computer scientists from Mila and political scientists from the Université de Montréal and McGill. You can find out more about these projects here and in my current research section.

Parliamentary Voting Records and Canadian Political Development

On this site, you will find the voting records of all Members of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate who served between 1867-2020. Part of these data were used in my award winning book Lost on Division: Party Unity in the Canadian Parliament and in several other recent publications. I am currently researching the development of political parties and the electoral behaviour of the inhabitants of Lower Canada between 1792 and 1841 by focusing on voting records, parliamentary debates, and historical newspapers. My approach to studying these documents combines data science and machine learning tools.