Abdul Reda, Amir

Status

Graduated

Email Address

amir.abdulreda@mail.utoronto.ca

Website

amirabdulreda.wixsite.com/mysite

Major

Comparative Politics

Supervisor(s)

Aisha S. Ahmad
Christopher Cochrane

Abdul Reda, Amir

Dissertation:

Opinion Formation and Quantification of Ideas: Understanding Arab Publics through Elites, Mass Media, and Development

Biography

Amir Abdul Reda is a PhD candidate in Political Science (ABD) and Bombardier Doctoral Scholar at the University of Toronto, and a Junior Fellow at Massey College. He works on the quantification and forecasting of public opinion using statistical methods and machine learning algorithms. His dissertation mainly looks at the influence of elites, mass media, and development on public opinion in Arab societies and their diasporas. It also engages with the quantification and visualization of political culture using graph theory and mass survey research.

Current research projects include: attitudes on immigrants and foreign workers in the MENA region, public opinion on the Caliphate in the Arab world, and the effect of Islamist political parties on constitutional changes in Muslim majority societies. His projects use data from such sources as the Arab Barometer, the Carnegie Middle East Governance and Islam Dataset 1988-2014, and the International Parliamentary Union, and has been generously funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

Publications

Abdul Reda, Amir. 2018. “Political Culture in the Islamic World: The Socioeconomic Roots of the Islamic Leviathan”. Comparative Sociology. 17(5):1-28.
Abdul Reda, Amir. 2016. “Framing Political Islam: Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian Uprising of 2011.” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33(4): 1-22.
Abdul Reda, Amir. 2014. “The Muslim Brotherhood in Power: Ideology and Governance in Post Arab Spring Egypt”. (University of Toronto: Master’s Thesis).

Research Interests

Public opinion; political behavior; political culture; mixed methods; machine learning; Middle Eastern and African politics; political Islam

Previous Degrees

niversity of Toronto (Canada) — M.A in Near and Middle Eastern Studies, 2012-2014
Main focus on Islamic political theory, history and philosophy Modern Middle Eastern politics and history
Université de Montréal (Canada) — B.Sc. with Honours in Political Science, 2009-2012
International relations, comparative politics, public administration, political theory and foreign languages

Teaching Experience

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL222- “Introduction to Quantitative Reasoning I” (175 hours); University of Toronto (Department of Political Science) — 2018
Leading tutorials, teaching tutorials on statistical analysis and experimental methods, marking, student advising, office hours, invigilation of test/exams.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL232- “Introduction to Quantitative Reasoning II” (145 hours); University of Toronto (Department of Political Science) — 2018
Leading tutorials, teaching tutorials on the R language for statistical analysis, marking, student advising, office hours, invigilation of test/exams.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POLC38H3S- “International Law” (60 hours); University of Toronto (Department of Political Science) — 2018
Marking

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POLB92H3 – “Comparative Politics: Revolution” (120 hours); University of Toronto (Department of Political Science) — 2017
Leading tutorials, marking, student advising, office hours, invigilation of test/exams.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL114H5S – “Politics in a Global World” (210 hours) — 2017
Leading tutorials, marking, student advising, office hours, invigilation of test/exams. Leading other course TAs and coordinating the grading and recording of grades

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL303Y5Y – “Politics of Islam” (70 hours); University of Toronto (Department of Political Science) — 2017-2018
Marking test/exams, student contact, invigilation of test/exams.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL218Y5Y – “Introduction to Comparative Politics” (70 hours) with Professors David Wolfe –– September-May 2016-2017
Leading tutorials, marking, student advising.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL201Y1Y – “Politics of Development: Issues and Controversies” (210 hours) with Professors Kanta Murali and Courtney Jung –– September-May 2016-2017
Leading tutorials, marking, student advising.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL114H5S – “Politics in a Global World” (140 hours) — 2016
Leading tutorials, marking, student advising, office hours, invigilation of test/exams.

Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for POL303Y5Y – “Politics of Islam” (70 hours); University of Toronto (Department of Political Science) — 2015-2016
Marking test/exams, student contact, invigilation of test/exams.