About
Michael Colaresi is the Associate Vice Provost for Data Science and William S. Dietrich II Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, affiliated with the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. He holds roles in the Center for Research Computing and Data, Computational Social Science program, and the Intelligent Systems Program at the School of Computing and Information. His research focuses on computational social science, leveraging machine learning and text analysis to study national security secrecy, political violence, and human rights dynamics. Colaresi co-directs the Responsible Data Science, Complexity, and AI for Peace (RedSCAIP) Lab, emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration to address societal challenges.
Education: PhD in Political Science from Indiana University (2002). He founded the Social Science Data Analytics initiative at Michigan State University and now leads efforts in Pitt’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. His work has been funded by NSF grants and foundations like Hillman and RK Mellon.
Research Interests: International Relations, computational methods, conflict forecasting, and the intersection of technology with democratic governance. His 2014 book *Democracy Declassified* explores secrecy dilemmas in liberal democracies and was shortlisted for the Conflict Research Society Prize. Recent projects include the ViEWS political violence early-warning system and HR-VEAW human rights analytics platform.
Awards: Co-winner of the 2017 Journal of Peace Research Best Visualization Award and 2006 Gosnell Prize for Political Methodology. He serves as co-editor of *International Interactions* and collaborates with institutions like the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Uppsala University’s Violence Early Warning Project.
Teaching: Courses include Computational Social Science, Bayesian Statistics, and Text-as-Data methods. His pedagogical focus emphasizes bridging social science theory with modern computational tools.
