Alex Giménez de La Prada

On the one side, I see the high level of granularity available in the register data as a unique opportunity to study how individuals react to changes in their relevant social environments. On the other side, advances in the last three decades in causal inference allow me to quantify and estimate the size of those effects in a rigorous, systematic, and transparent ways. In my work, I combine registered data with cutting-edge causal inference to unravel social processes.
I conceive this combination as a way to look for social mechanisms in a fully grounded empirical way

In my Ph. D thesis, I apply this approach to study ethnic residential segregation. I am interested in how changes occurring within the social environment of individuals can affect their inter-neighborhood mobility. I am currently working on two different projects at my third year of PhD. First project, how changes in the proportion of whites occurring at different geographical distances in relation to a focal residence can modify the levels of white flight/avoidance. Second project, on how social influence mechanisms can impact the levels of inter-neighborhood movements, conceived as a behavior different from the result of ethnic preferences. In addition, I am also deeply keen to study the effect of network topology, simulation models and visualization tools.

I graduated in Sociology by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 2014. I then started a MSc on research methods for the social sciences in 2016. In that same year I started a Ph.D in Analytical Sociology at the Institute for Analytical Sociology. Being at IAS has allowed me to learning how to code and process big amounts of data efficiently, to building agent-based models from scratch, and to implementing designs that work best for dealing with causal questions that concern social mechanisms. I have been also teaching a lecture on 'Fast and Frugal Heuristics' in MSc Computational Social Science held by IAS, under the subject of 'Behavioral Mechanisms in the Social Sciences', as well as being a teacher assistant in the course on 'Agent-Based Modeling' for the same MSc”.

Academic exam

• Bachelor in Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, 2014.
• Master degree in Applied Techniques for Social Research (TISA), University of Barcelona, Spain, 2016.
• PhD in Analytical Sociology, 2016-.