Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca Johnson is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, affiliated with the Department of Sociology and the Massive Data Institute. She also serves as a 2020-2021 Access to Justice Faculty Scholar with the American Bar Foundation, an academic affiliate with the Office of Evaluation Sciences, and a visiting Data Science Fellow at The Lab at DC.

Her research examines how social service bureaucracies balance legal mandates, fiscal constraints, and family advocacy when prioritizing resources, with a focus on K-12 education, rental housing, and civil rights enforcement. Methodologically, she employs causal inference, computational text analysis, machine learning, interviews, and field experiments with large administrative datasets. Recent work explores algorithmic prioritization in social policy and legal dispute resolution interventions.

Teaching highlights include courses on data science foundations for public policy (PPOL564) and modern statistical computing (QSS20/PBPL 40.01), emphasizing Python, R, SQL, and reproducible research practices. She has developed interactive visualizations analyzing amicus briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases like Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, revealing divides between parental advocacy groups and school district interests.

Collaborative efforts include partnerships with the Office of Evaluation Sciences on behavioral science interventions and the American Bar Foundation on access to justice initiatives. Her work bridges computational methods with sociological inquiry, addressing equity in education, healthcare, and housing systems.