Hello! My name is Arun Frey. I'm a research scientist and sociologist.
Currently, I am a data scientist at The Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab) at Stanford University, working on machine learning solutions that optimise government processes. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford and a research fellow at Nuffield College. I received my PhD in Sociology at the University of Oxford in 2021 and was based at Harvard University's Department of Sociology as a Visiting Fellow between 2020 and 2021. In 2022, I participated in the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University.
My academic research uses granular data to understand the relationship between technology, inequality, and social change. I have published articles on the causes of anti-refugee violence, the consequences of mass shootings, on using Twitter to study protest participation, and on the educational ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. What unites these projects is a common ambition to use computational methods and unique data to study pressing social problems. Methodologically, I am interested in causal inference, computational sociology, and applying machine learning in the social sciences.
My academic writing has been published in PNAS, Nature Communications, AAAI-24, Social Forces, European Sociological Review, and others, and has been cited in outlets such as The New York Times, The Economist, the BBC, and the Financial Times. My research on the impact of COVID-19 on learning loss and inequality initiated parliamentary discussions at the European Commission, World Bank, UK House of Commons, and the Dutch Government and was awarded with the 2021 National Academy of Sciences Cozzarelli Prize.
Some of the academic projects that I am currently working on include using real-estate listings to map local opposition to refugee settlements and monitoring animal feeding operations through remote sensing and computer vision. I am also working on some other, non-academic projects. Check my GitHub to see what I'm currently working on or shoot me an e-mail.