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Connor Gilroy
Computational sociologist & PhD candidate
Education
PhD, Sociology
University of Washington Seattle, WADissertation: “Expressions of Community: Understanding Variations in Community through LGBTQ Experiences.” (proposal defended June 2022)
Committee: Kate Stovel (chair), Jelani Ince, Kyle Crowder, Mako Hill
Comprehensive Exam: “Community: Origins, Processes, and Consequences.” Passed with distinction (June 2019) | reading list
Certificate: Special Concentration in Social Statistics (May 2019)
MA, Sociology
University of Washington Seattle, WAThesis: “How Distinct is Gay Neighborhood Change? Patterns and Variation in Gayborhood Trajectories.” | full text
- Department of Sociology Outstanding Master’s Thesis (2019)
- Graduate School Distinguished Thesis Award in Social Sciences (2019)
Committee: Kate Stovel (chair), Emilio Zagheni
BA, Biology and Geophysical Sciences
University of Chicago Chicago, ILMinor: Gender and Sexuality Studies
Publications
Measuring the Predictability of Life Outcomes with a Scientific Mass Collaboration
Salganik, Matthew J., Ian Lundberg, Alexander T. Kindel, [and 109 others, including Connor Gilroy]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(15):8398–8403. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1915006117
Work in Progress
How Distinct is Gay Neighborhood Change? Patterns and Variation in Gayborhood Trajectories
Geography or Gemeinschaft? Disentangling the meaning of “community” through word embeddings
Density, diversity, culture: How place characteristics shape individual sense of community for LGBTQ people
Fellowships, Honors, & Awards
2019. Graduate School Distinguished Thesis Award in Social Sciences
2019. Department of Sociology Outstanding Master’s Thesis
2018. Travel Award, Schwartz Endowment, University of Washington ($1000)
2017. Best Poster (for “Extending the Demography of Sexuality with Digital Trace Data”) (co-winner), Fall Lightning Talks and Poster Session, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington
2017. Travel Award, Graduate School Fund for Excellence and Innovation, University of Washington ($500)
2017. Participant in the Russell Sage Foundation Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS), Princeton University
2016–2017. NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Fellowship, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington ($23376)
2016. Schwartz Award, Department of Sociology, University of Washington ($3500)
2015–2016. Top Scholar Award, Graduate School Fund for Excellence and Innovation, University of Washington
Research Experience
Data Science intern
Meta Seattle, WA- Analyzed feed engagement with reshared Facebook Groups content, presented insights to the Director of Data Science for Communities, built a data pipeline to create a new metric, reanalyzed a collection of experiments to quantify tradeoffs between types of content, and launched a new experiment to assess incremental value of reshared content (2022, Communities Ecosystem team)
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Washington Seattle, WA(with Zack Almquist)
- Text and network analysis of Twitter data from homeless care organizations | R, SQL
- Built a web crawler and a PostgreSQL database to scrape and store text data from nonprofit and government webpages | Python, SQL
User Experience Research Intern
Facebook Seattle, WA- Designed, fielded, and analyzed a complex stratified survey of job seeker needs and satisfaction; wrote a widely-referenced technical guide to creating inverse probability weights for nonresponse using an internal Python tool; evaluated quality of an external vendor’s missing data imputation for a sensitive survey question (2021, Commerce Ecosystem team)
- Designed and conducted two studies (log data analysis with random forest models, behaviorally-targeted followup survey) of factors driving initial participation in new online communities (2020, Community Creation team)
Consultant, Survey Data Analysis
The World Bank Group Washington, DC- Statistical modeling and visualization of gender-based disparities in Central Asia; wrote reproducible R pipeline for updating reports with new waves of survey data (with Stephen Winkler, supervisor Audrey Sacks) | story based on analysis
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Washington Seattle, WA- Agent-based network models of public opinion change (with Katherine Stovel)
Teaching Experience
Instructor
University of Washington Seattle, WA- SOC 225: Data and Society (2018, 2019) | syllabus, lab materials
Graduate Teaching Assistant
University of Washington Seattle, WAUndergraduate:
- SOC 316: Sociological Theory (2019)
- SOC 225: Data and Society (2018)
- SOC 401 A: Data Science and Population Processes (2017)
- SOC 351: Intimate Relationships (2016)
Graduate:
- SOC 504, 505, 506: Social Statistics (2019-2020, 2022-2023)
- CSSS 564: Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences
(2018, 2019) | lab materials
Workshops and lectures
- Instructor (with Sandeep Soni), Comparing Word Embedding Models
NLP+CSS 201 Tutorials (2021) | materials, recording - Instructor, Workshop on Word Embeddings for the Social Sciences
Computational Social Science reading group, Sociologists of Digital Things
(2021) | materials - Guest Lecturer, Demography and Data Science
CSSS 563: Statistical Demography (Instructor: Adrian Raftery), University of Washington
(2020, 2021) | lecture materials, lab materials - Instructor, Introduction to tidycensus (with Neal Marquez)
Computational Demography Working Group, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington
(2020) | materials - Organizer, Seattle partner location for the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS-Seattle) (with Bernease Herman)
eScience Institute, University of Washington
(2018) | website - Facilitator, IUSSP Training workshop on Social Media, Big Data and Digital Demography (with Emilio Zagheni)
Side meeting at the International Population Conference, Cape Town
(2017) | materials
Service
Reviews for American Sociological Review, Socius, Sociological Methodology, Demographic Research, CHI, Journal of Homosexuality
2022–2023 Leader, Gender and Sexuality Graduate Research Cluster, Simpson Center, University of Washington
2020–2021 Secretary, Graduate Student Association, Department of Sociology, University of Washington
2018–2020. Organizer, Computational Demography Working Group, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington
2018. Influencer, Social Media Team, ASA Sexualities Preconference
2016–2017. Officer, Rainbow Grads, University of Washington
2015–2017. Wiki Coordinator, Graduate Student Association, Department of Sociology, University of Washington
Other Work Experience
Quality Assurance
Epic Systems Corporation Verona, WI- Automated and manual software testing
Conference Presentations
Density, Diversity, Culture: How Place Characteristics Shape Individual Sense of Community for LGBTQ People
Annual Meeting of the AmericanSociological Association Los Angeles, CA
Community and Urban Sociology Section Section, “Queer Placemaking Beyond the Gayborhood”
Geography or Gemeinschaft? Disentangling the Meaning of “Community” through Word Embeddings
Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association VirtualSociology of Culture Section Roundtable Session, “Meaning and Metaphor”
How Distinct is Gay Neighborhood Change? Patterns and Variation in Gayborhood Trajectories
Annual Meeting of the AmericanSociological Association Philadelphia, PA
Special session on “The Social and Cultural Construction of Places”
Power in the Pipeline? Queer Accountability and the Ethics of Data Processing
ASA Sexualities Section Preconference Philadelphia, PA“Methodologically Queer” panel
Extending the Demography of Sexuality with Digital Trace Data
Population Association of America Annual Meeting Denver, COSession on Families, Social Media, and Technology
Social Structure and Change in Public Opinion: The Case of Same-Sex Marriage
With Katherine Stovel. Invited book chapter for Architecture of the Social, Peter Hedström and Petri Ylikoski, editors. draft submitted September 2016