Zachary P. Dickson

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in Quantitative Methods in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics. I am also affiliated with the Data Science Institute, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and the Public Opinion Analytics Lab. I completed my PhD at the University of Glasgow in 2024.

My research examines the rise of radical right populism, with a particular focus on the politics of climate change and public services. Place-based dynamics, such as local economic conditions and conflict over access to resources, create grievances that radical right parties mobilise against. I am interested in how political actors capitalize on these grievances to shape public opinion and vote choice, particularly in North America and Europe.

Research methods are a big part of my research identity. My work combines computational social science methods with design-based causal inference methods. Many of the projects I have worked on use large language models that have been trained on political communication data. You can find some of these models on Hugging Face.

My work is forthcoming or has been published in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Political Communication, and other top journals. My research has also been covered in The Economist, The Guardian, The New Statesman, among other outlets. For a complete list, see my publications or Google Scholar.

My CV is available here.