I am a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim.  Starting in August '15, I'll be a post-doctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center in the Harvard Kennedy School. My research focuses on political violence, state repression and the measurement of human rights. I'm currently researching how changes in access to communication technology and social media affect the dynamics of wartime violence against civilians. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to accurately quantify violence, and writing code that does that. Since 2009, I have been working for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that applies rigorous scientific methods to the analysis of human rights violations around the world. We just published a report for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that assessed and analysed the patterns of documented fatalities in the Syrian conflict.