Donnay, Karsten, Dr.

 

I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation at ETH Zürich. In 2014 I completed my PhD in Political Science in the team of Prof. Helbing. My external PhD advisors were Prof. Ravi Bhavnani (Graduate Institute, Geneva) and Prof. Scott E. Page (University of Michigan).

 

Research Interest

My general research interest is in quantitative conflict modeling, currently with a focus on asymmetric intra-state conflicts. In my PhD research I used detailed and geographically disaggregated empirical violence data to develop and validate conflict models at the level of (sub-national) actor groups. Theoretically the work is grounded in the Political Science conflict literature, methods used range from standard statistical techniques to agent-based modeling and statistical techniques adopted from the natural sciences.

CV

Education:

• 2010-2014: PhD student, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Science, ETH Zürich

• 2008-2009: Diploma thesis in Physics, Technical University of Munich (Germany)

• 2007-2008: Graduate studies in Physics, McGill University, Montreal (Canada)

• 2004-2007: Undergraduate studies in Physics, Technical University of Munich (Germany)

• 2003-2004: Undergraduate studies in Mathematics, FernUniversität Hagen (Germany)

Academic Positions:

• since 10/2014: Postdoctoral Researcher, ETH Zürich, Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation

• 03/2010-09/2014: Scientific assistant, ETH Zürich, Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation

Professional Experience:

• 11/2009-01/2010: Intern at Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Wuppertal (Germany)

Publications

• Karsten Donnay and Vladimir Filimonov. (2014). "Views to a war: systematic differences in media and military reporting of the war in Iraq." EPJ Data Science 3:25 doi: 10.1140/epjds/s13688-014-0025-x

• Karsten Donnay. (2014). "Disaggregating Civil Conflict: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Contributions ." PhD Thesis, ETH Zurich doi: 10.3929/ethz-a-010259246

• Sebastian Schutte and Karsten Donnay. (2014). "Matched wake analysis: Finding causal relationships in spatiotemporal event data." Political Geography 41:1-10 doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2014.03.001 (R package)

• Ravi Bhavnani, Karsten Donnay, Dan Miodownik, Maayan Mor and Dirk Helbing. (2014). "Group Segregation and Urban Violence." American Journal of Political Science 58(1):226-245 doi: 10.1111/ajps.12045

• Karsten Donnay, Elena Gadjanova and Ravi Bhavnani. (2014). "Disaggregating Conflict by Actors, Time, and Location." in David A. Backer, Paul K. Huth, and Jonathan Wilkenfeld (eds.) Peace and Conflict 2014 Paradigm Publishers.

• Dirk Helbing, Dirk Brockmann, Thomas Chadefaux, Karsten Donnay, Ulf Blanke, Olivia Woolley-Meza, Mehdi Moussaid, Anders Johansson, Jens Krause, Sebastian Schutte and Matjaz Perc. (2014). "Saving Human Lives: What Complexity Science and Information Systems can Contribute." Journal of Statistical Physics doi:10.1007/s10955-014-1024-9

• Matjaz Perc, Karsten Donnay and Dirk Helbing. (2013). "Understanding Recurrent Crime as System-Immanent Collective Behavior." PLoS ONE 8(10):e76063 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0076063

• Ravi Bhavnani and Karsten Donnay. (2012). "Here's Looking at You: The Arab Spring and Violence in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank." Swiss Political Science Review 18(1):124-131 doi: 10.1111/j.1662-6370.2012.02056.x

Media Coverage

• Political options tested in a virtual wind tunnel. ETH Life, 11.07.2013

• Schweizer Forscher entwickeln Windkanal für den Nahostkonflikt. Tages-Anzeiger, 11.07.2013 (in German)

• Mit Forschung gegen Gewalt. SRF Tagesschau, 13.07.2013. Article in News: International of SRF: Frieden schaffen in Jerusalem – mit einer Computersimulation (in German)

• Simulierter Friede in Jerusalem. DRadio Wissen, 18.07.2013 (in German)

• The reasons behind crime. ETH Life, 10.10.2013