Benjamin Rohr
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
Hello! I am a political and historical sociologist who uses quantitative and computational methods to study elite political action.
My dissertation examines the relationship between state formation and the emergence of the first political parties in New York State between 1777 and 1820. I am particularly interested in the processes that tied political elites into the emerging party system, focusing on the role of social networks and political careers. This research is supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. Other work analyzes the career paths that led into elite administrative positions in the American state between 1850 and 2000, the structure of political careers in China from 1978 to 2012, and the structure of political discourse in Renaissance Florence. You can read more about my work here.
Research
Dissertation: “Portraits of a Political World: The Structure of the First Party System in New York, 1777-1822”
Drawing on several novel datasets, my dissertation examines the emergence and structure of the first party system in the state of New York.
Political Careers
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Political Discourse in Renaissance Florence
Padgett, John F., Katalin Prajda, Benjamin Rohr, and Jonathan Schoots. 2020. “Political Discussion and Debate in Narrative Time: The Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, 1376-1378.” Poetics 78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2019.101377.
Schoots, Jonathan, Benjamin Rohr, Katalin Prajda, and John F. Padgett. 2020. “Political Conflict and Revolt in Generational Time: The Florentine Consulte e Pratiche and Ciompi Revolt, 1376-1378.” Poetics 78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2019.101386.
Methods for Ecological Analyses
Rohr, Benjamin and John Levi Martin. 2021. “How (Not) to Control for Population Size in Ecological Analyses.” Sociological Methods and Research. Online First: https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124120986188.
Contact
You can contact me at brohr@uchicago.edu.