Department of Political Science

Islam, Md. Muhajedul

Dissertation:

How Ethical Positions of Voters and Politicians Matter in a Democracy

Biography

Md Mujahedul Islam is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He specializes in comparative politics, comparative public policy and policy analysis (with a focus on quantitative political methodology). He is also a Research Fellow of the Policy, Elections, and Representation Lab (PEARL) in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, a Co-organizer of the University of Toronto Political Behavior Group, the Convener of the Quantitative Methods Research Cluster, and a Representative of the Comparative Politics Area Group in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

In his dissertation, Mujahed examines how ethical position of voters and politicians matter in a democracy by using two novel surveys and six conjoint experiments conducted over 3600 Americans and 2200 Canadians. His research also investigates the effects of local candidates, ideological heterogeneity, and population size on voting behavior, party choice, democratic representation and satisfaction with democracy. He employs a variety of empirical methods, including survey and conjoint experiments, observational data, longitudinal data, and textual data. His work has been published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science and the Journal of European Social Policy.

Mujahed is passionate about teaching. Over the last six years, he has been teaching courses on political methodology, comparative politics and comparative public policy in his role as a Course Instructor, Guest Lecturer and/or as a Teaching Assistant (TA). He taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, St. George, the University of Toronto, Mississauga, and the University of Toronto, Scarborough. He also served as a TA at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Program 2021 in Quantitative Methods at the University of Michigan, USA. From 2016 to 2017, he served as a TA and Quantitative Methods Advisor for two Master of Public Policy level statistics courses at the Hertie School (The University of Governance in Berlin).

He received a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance in 2016, majoring in quantitative policy analysis. He also received a Master of Social Sciences (2012) and a Bachelor of Social Sciences (2011) from the University of Dhaka with a distinction in Political Science.

Publications

Donnelly, Michael J., Md Mujahedul Islam, and Justin Savoie. “The public face of interest group lobbying on immigration: Who responds to and who ignores what they say.” Journal of European Social Policy (2020): 543-556.

Stevens, Benjamin Allen, Md Mujahedul Islam, Roosmarijn de Geus, Jonah Goldberg, John R.
McAndrews, Alex Mierke-Zatwarnicki, Peter John Loewen, and Daniel Rubenson. “Local Candidate Effects in Canadian Elections.” Canadian Journal of Political Science (2019): 83-96.

Research Interests

Ethics, Ethical Distance and Democracy; Democratic Representation; Voter Turnout; Political Behaviour; Public Opinion; Immigration; Experimentation; Survey and Conjoint Experiments; Causal Inference

Previous Degrees

Master of Public Policy (Hertie School of Governance)
Master of Social Sciences in Political Science (University of Dhaka)
Bachelor of Social Sciences in Political Science (University of Dhaka)

Teaching Experience

Course Instructor for “POL242Y5Y: Methods” (University of Toronto, Mississauga)
• Summer 2021 (Online-synchronous) Evaluation: 4.5/5.0 (Dept. average: 4.3/5.0 & Division average: 4.1/5.0)
• Summer 2020 (Online-synchronous) Evaluation: 4.4/5.0 (Dept. average: 4.2/5.0 & Division average: 3.9/5.0)
• Summer 2019 (On-campus/in-person) Evaluation: 4.7/5.0 (Dept. average: 4.5/5.0 & Division average: 4.0/5.0)
• Student population: Undergraduate

Course Instructor for “POL232H1S – Introduction to Quantitative Reasoning II” (University of Toronto, St. George)
• Summer 2021 (Online-synchronous) Evaluation: 4.0/5.0 (Dept. average: 4.5/5.0 & Division average: 4.2/5.0 )
• Student population: Undergraduate

– Teaching Assistant for “POL101: The Real World of Politics”, (Undergraduate course), University of Toronto, St. George (Professor Jung) – Fall 2020

– Teaching Assistant for “POL114: Politics in the Global World”, (Undergraduate course), University of Toronto, Mississauga (Dr. Cavoukian) – Winter 2020

– Teaching Assistant for “PPGC66: Public Policy Making”, (Undergraduate course), University of Toronto, Scarborough (Dr. Wilder) – Winter 2020

– Teaching Assistant for “PPGC66: Public Policy Making”, (Undergraduate course), University of Toronto, Scarborough (Professor Beange) – Fall 2018

– Teaching Assistant for “POL101: Democracy, Dictatorship, War, and Peace” (Undergraduate
course), University of Toronto, St. George (Professor Hoffmann) – Fall-Winter, 2017-2018

– Teaching Assistant for “Statistics and Data Analysis I: Introduction”, (ICPSR Quantitative
Methods Program), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Professor Pamphilis)-Summer 2021
Statistical software taught: Stata (also helped with R/RStudio and SPSS)

– Teaching Assistant for “POL2504: Statistics for Political Scientists”, (Ph.D. course), University of Toronto, St. George (Professor Chyzh) – Fall 2021
Statistical software helped with: R/RStudio

– Teaching Assistant for “POL2504: Statistics for Political Scientists”, (Ph.D. course), University of Toronto, St. George (Professor Donnelly) – Fall 2018
Statistical software helped with: R/RStudio

– Teaching Assistant for “C5: Statistics I: Descriptives, Inference and Regression”, (MPP course), Hertie School of Governance (Professor Kayser) – Fall 2016.
Statistical software taught: Stata

– Quantitative Methods Advisor for “C5: Statistics II: Time-Series, Panel Data & Maximum
Likelihood”, (MPP course), Hertie School of Governance (Professor Kayser) – Winter 2016
Statistical software taught: Stata and R/RStudio