Semra Sevi

Semra Sevi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She is cross-appointed with the Munk School of Global Affairs and a Faculty Fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. She holds an Honours BA and an MA in Political Science and History from the University of Toronto, as well as a PhD in Political Science from the Université de Montréal.
Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. Her research focuses on Canadian politics, particularly political recruitment and representation, specifically, who runs for public office and who ultimately gains representation. She has compiled the largest publicly available dataset on candidates in Canadian federal elections, spanning from 1867 to the present. This dataset is introduced in the article “Who Runs? Canadian Federal and Ontario Provincial Candidates from 1867 to 2019” (accompanied by an animation video) and is regularly updated as new elections occur, supporting ongoing research on electoral participation.
In addition, her current work uses a series of experimental studies to examine the development of AI-based systems designed to inform and persuade voters through dialogue, with a focus on electoral contexts in both Canada and the United States.