Carnegie Mellon University
October 30, 2012

Predicting Local-level Violence Results from Post-war Liberia

Robert Blair

Yale University
Tuesday October 30, 2012
12:00 pm-1:20 pm
Gates Hall 8102

Is it possible to identify and measure the most robust correlates of local-level violence? Is it possible to use those correlates to predict where violence is most likely to occur? This talk will present results from an ongoing attempt to answer these questions using a variety of machine learning techniques and an original panel survey from rural Liberia.

Robert Blair is a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University. His research focuses on peacekeeping and statebuilding and the potential trade-offs between them, with a regional focus on West Africa. He codirects the Liberia Conflict Risk Evaluation (CoRE) with Christopher Blattman and Alexandra Hartman.

A Center for Human Rights Science Colloquium. Co-sponsored by the Machine Learning Department and the Language Technologies Institute, with support from the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Science