Connected_Politics Lab
An interdisciplinary computational social science research hub at University College Dublin, combining political science with cutting-edge data science methods.
The Connected_Politics Lab is an interdisciplinary computational social science research hub based at University College Dublin. The lab brings together researchers from political science, computer science, and data science to study political communication, legislative decision-making, and democratic transparency.
Since its founding, the lab has secured over EUR 1.72m in research funding and has produced research published in leading political science and interdisciplinary journals. The lab’s work spans text-as-data methods, network analysis, natural language processing, and large language models applied to political science questions.
Key research themes include:
- EU politics and legislative decision-making – analysing Council of Ministers deliberations, legislative amendments, and policy outcomes
- Central bank communication – studying ECB policy agendas and communications using computational text analysis
- Parliamentary transparency – developing tools and methods to make parliamentary processes more accessible to citizens
- Digital campaigning – mapping how political candidates use social media to communicate policy positions