Steven Lloyd Wilson is an Associate Professor of Politics at Brandeis University's Department of Politics. He holds multiple key roles including Project Manager for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, Chief Technical Officer for the Demscore Project, and co-Principal Investigator of the Digital Society Project. Wilson specializes in comparative democratization, cybersecurity, and the impact of social media on authoritarian regimes, with a focus on post-Soviet states. His work bridges computational social science and policy analysis, leveraging large-scale datasets to study global political dynamics. Education: PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of San Diego. Research Interests: Wilson examines how digital technologies shape political processes, particularly in non-democratic contexts. His work analyzes Twitter networks in Israel, vaccine hesitancy misinformation, and the role of social media in protest movements like Venezuela’s anti-Maduro and Hong Kong’s anti-extradition protests. He also develops innovative datasets such as the Digital Society Project (DSP) and V-Dem’s comprehensive democracy metrics. Awards: Postdoctoral Research Fellow (V-Dem 2016-2017), Nominee for Carnegie Fellowship (2017), Honorary Fellow at University of Wisconsin (2018-2019), Norman Fund Recipient (Brandeis 2020). Served as Visiting Professor at NYU (2020) and University of Gothenburg (2023). Grants & Advising: Primary investigator on multiple projects including Demscore and Digital Society Project. Advises on computational infrastructure for V-Dem and collaborates internationally through affiliations like NYU’s Social Media and Politics Center. Labs/Teams: Leads computational research teams at V-Dem and DSP, focusing on data-driven analysis of global political trends. Active in developing open-source tools for measuring democracy and digital politics.




