The School of Public Policy is delighted to welcome six new faculty members to the School for the Fall 2026 semester. Merve Keskin, Irene Morse, and Lydia Reader join the Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) program; Jennifer Dieringer and Andres Rodriguez Caceres join the Department of Legal Studies; and Brian Adler joins the Department of Public Policy.
Lydia Reader joins DACSS after earning her PhD in the Division of Computational and Data Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research is at the intersection of computational methodologies, complex systems science, and Public Health. She uses tools like Agent Based Modeling to promote theoretical exploration of public health topics such as physical activity, aging, and nutrition.
Merve Keskin joins DACSS after earning her PhD in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research applies computational social science methods to the study of conflict dynamics and peacebuilding, drawing on machine learning, natural language processing, geospatial analysis, and statistical modeling. She is passionate about teaching courses that help students develop strong computational and empirical research skills.
Irene Morse comes to DACSS with her PhD in Comparative Politics and Research Methods from the University of Michigan. Her research looks at political activism among Turkish diaspora communities and transnational online activism against authoritarianism more broadly. She specializes in quantitative text analysis and expansion of NLP resources to languages other than English.
Jennifer Dieringer joins Legal Studies in a new capacity as a lecturer of practice, having previously taught in the department. She has spent her career in community legal aid, and her pedagogy is highly experiential. According to her, it is based heavily on her "graduate program at Northeastern University School of Law, [her] teaching experience as a visiting professor in the poverty law clinic at University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and [her] career practicing poverty law."
Andres Rodriguez Caceres earned his PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University and specializes in policymaking processes. His comparative work focuses on institutional change in the areas of labor and race, exposing the power dynamics behind legal reforms, and on the long-term consequences of legal change.
Brian Adler joins Public Policy having completed his PhD in Public & Social Policy with a concentration in Urban & Community Development from Saint Louis University. He is interested in Applied AI, ML, and Spatial Classification; housing and economic inequality, land use, transit, and the social consequences on citizens of various intersectional backgrounds of urban design and public policy.