About Margaret Foster

Graduate Student

Political Science

Duke University

Fields: IR, Methods

On Job Market?

No

Connect

Email: mjf34@duke.edu

Twitter profile: @twitter.com/margaretfoster

Biographical sketch and research interests

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University.   My primary fields are Security, Peace, and Conflict and quantitative methods. My dissertation project proposes a theory of grassroots-driven, “bottom-up,” organizational transformation in resource-constrained organizations. Additional projects explore the pathways through which network connections influence the trajectories of constituent groups and the diversity of organizational structures among issue-motivated groups.  I have a strong interest in quantitative and computational methods for political science, particularly applied Bayesian statistics, text-as-data, and network analysis. Before coming to Duke, I tracked and analyzed jihadi and far-right propaganda as a senior analyst at the SITE Intelligence Group, an experience which has deeply shaped my approach to developing a theoretically-driven research agenda that is strongly informed by primary sources and tested quantitatively.