Welcome Dr. Joan Timoneda, Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics and Methods!                         

Dr. Joan Timoneda joins the Department as Assistant Professor, researching and teaching in the areas of comparative politics and methods. His work engages critical questions about the fate of dictatorships and democracies in the digital age. Using novel data science methods, including advanced natural language processing techniques, Timoneda’s work analyzes the phenomenon of personalism in politics, particularly in authoritarian contexts.

His work has largely focused on cross-national analyses of democratic backsliding and authoritarian institutions, and has used regional expertise on the Dominican Republic and the broader Caribbean to inform his arguments. In addition, his research agenda also engages big data and text analysis to investigate how new technologies and social media —including data from Twitter and Google trends— influence politics and contribute to rising personalism. Professor Timoneda completed a PhD in political science at the University of Maryland, College Park after earning an M.Phil in Latin American Studies at Oxford and a B.A. in political science and a B.A. in philosophy, both at Arizona State University.