David B.

Sparks
Contact Department of Political Science office: Old Chem 408A
Information Duke University phone: (919) 724-4443
Durham, NC e-mail: d.sparks@duke.edu

Research American politics, statistical methods, political parties, voter behavior, multidimensional scaling,
Interests social network analysis, formal modeling, computational modeling

Education Duke University, Durham, NC

Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science 2006 – present

Subfields: American Politics and Methods

Advisor: John H. Aldrich
Expected graduation date: April 2012

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics 2002 – 2006

Honors and pariss Certificate, Duke University, 2009

Awards James B. Duke Fellow, Duke University, 2006 – present
pipc Fellow, Duke University, 2006 – present
Summa Cum Laude, Vanderbilt University, 2006
Honors in Political Science, Vanderbilt University, 2006
Honors in the College of Arts & Science, Vanderbilt University, 2006
Phi Beta Kappa, Vanderbilt University, 2006

Manuscripts in “Expanding the Tent: Electoral Success and the Heterogeneity of Party Support.”
Progress
Conference “Drawing (Inferences) Outside the Line: Dimensionality in Congress.” With John H. Aldrich and
Presentations Jacob M. Montgomery. Presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Political Science Association.
“Regionalization via Network-Constrained Clustering.” (Poster) Presented at the 2010 Political Net-
works Conference.
“Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Partisan Structure in Online Social Networks.” Presented at the
2010 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.
“Party Control and Political Agendas: The Influence of Party on Substantive Eras of Congress.”
Presented at the 2010 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.
“Political figures in a social and cultural context: Dimensionality of candidate evaluations.” With
John H. Aldrich. Presented at the 2010 meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.
“The Obama Effect: Racial Attitudes and Their Effects on Candidate Appraisals.” With Candis S.
Watts. Presented at the 2009 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.

Invited Talks “A Thousand Words: The Visualization of Large-N, Multidimensional Data.” Presented at the Na-
tional Institute of Standards and Technology, Washington, DC. Sep. 2010
“Racial Attitudes and Their Effects on Candidate Evaluations.” With Candis S. Watts. Presented
at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, Duke University.
Nov. 2009.

Professional Duke University, Durham, NC

Experience Instructor Fall 2010
Instructor of record for undergraduate American Political Parties course.

Teaching Assistant August 2007 – present

Teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in positive political theory, game theory and social
choice.
Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, Durham, NC
Teaching Assistant Summer 2010
Statistics instructor for summer program that exposes undergraduates to graduate study in Political
Science.

Boston Celtics, Boston, MA

Statistical Intern 2008 – present