RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Climate-Conflict Nexus, International Political Economy, Development, Climate Policy, (Im)migration Policy, Refugee Studies, Civil War & Peacebuilding, Conflict, Research Methodology, Quasi-Experimental Analysis, Geospatial Data, Computational Social Science

Publications

Article

Forthcoming

  • D’Amico, E. (R&R). Unrest in Urbanity: Unraveling the Impact of Economic Shocks on Migration and Urban Dynamics. Review of International Political Economy.
  • D’Amico, E. (R&R). Resilient by Design: An Investigation of Climate Adaptation Laws in New England. Nature Climate Action.
  • D'Amico, E., & Houghton, K. (forthcoming). Financial Dependencies and Conflict Resolution: The Role of Militarized Mediators in Modern Insurgencies. Civil Wars.
  • D'Amico, E., Melin, M., & Sosa, S. (forthcoming). No Ex-Combatant Left Behind: Economic Reintegration & the Durability of Peace. Journal of Peace Research.
  • D'Amico, E. Chapter 4: The National Framework for Peace: Cross-national Instances of Economic Reincorporation in Treaties and their Outcomes. In M. Melin & S. Sosa (Eds.), The Missing Peace: Understanding Private Enterprises in Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Oxford University Press.
  • Clausen, M. & D'Amico, E. Chapter 7: Reducing Urban Violence: The Case of Chicago. In M. Melin & S. Sosa (Eds.), The Missing Peace: Understanding Private Enterprises in Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Oxford University Press.

Under Review

  • D’Amico, E. Balancing the Power: A Comparative Analysis of Hydropower Development and Conflict in the Global Renewable Energy Transition. Global Environmental Politics.
  • D’Amico, E. & Maboudi, T. Timing Matters: Analyzing Climate Policies and Adaptive Resilience. Climate Policy.
  • Maboudi, T. & D’Amico, E. Life, Liberty, and Litigation: The Impact of Environmental Laws and Constitutional Rights on Climate Change Litigation. Climatic Change.

Near Submission

  • D’Amico, E. The Geography of Conflict Mediation: Spatial Autocorrelation, Proximity, and Success in Armed Conflict Resolutions. Near submission for Journal of Peace Research.
  • Hendrix, C., D’Amico, E., & Glaser, S. From Ocean Changes to Conflict: Predicting Fishery-Related Militarized Disputes in a Warming World.

Works in Progress

  • D’Amico, Elisa. Turbulent Tides: Climate, Migration, Conflict, & the Quest for Economic Stability. Oxford University Press, "Studies in Comparative Energy & Environmental Politics" Series. Planned.
  • D’Amico, E., Nutley, K., & Sharma, A. The Impact of Environmental Protest on Legislative Response: A Comparative LDA Analysis of Liberal Democracies.
  • D’Amico, E. & Peter, M. Conflict Management in a Multipolar World: Identifying the Turning Point.
  • D’Amico, E. Harnessing Machine Learning and Geospatial Tools for Climate Displacement Measurement.

Alternative Publications


Research Experience

  • 2018–2023: Research Assistant, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
    Worked with Dr. Eric Hansen, Dr. Kara Ross Camarena, Dr. Patrick Boyle, Dr. Sarah Maxey, Dr. Tofigh Maboudi, Dr. Molly Melin, Dr. Sooyeon Kang, and Dr. Jay Kao on various projects in political science.

  • 2023: Graduate Student Associate, Institute for Racial Justice, Loyola University
    Transcribed and coded focus group recordings, synthesizing data on equity in gifted programming.

  • 2017: Special Interest Groups Data Analyst, Project VoteSmart
    Web-scraping and cleaning of special interest groups data in R.

  • 2016: Research Intern, The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
    Served under Alex Rowley, Member of the Scottish Parliament; Focus on devolution of powers, taxation, and public well-being.

Ad Hoc Projects

  • Created Stata templates for causation and quasi-experimental graduate-level projects.
  • Used Python console to import, polygonize, spatially merge, and export data in QGIS.
  • Used R to scrape, code, and semi-automate text analysis from peace agreement documents.
  • Used R and APIs to query Chicago crime and census data and geospatially merge.
  • Used SQL BigQuery on a number of conflict-related projects to extract data.
  • Developed an interactive infographic mapping climate disasters and migration patterns over time.
  • Created quizzes in Qualtrics for complex grading schemes.
  • Used Excel VBA and Stata to merge large climate law and litigation data.

CERTIFICATIONS

  • 2023: DataCamp Data Scientist Professional, R; SQL, Python
  • 2023: Qualtrics XM Professional Certification
  • 2022: Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) Certification

COMPUTER AND TECHNICAL SKILLS

  • Data Skills: Querying (e.g., SQL/Python/Google BigQuery); Excel VBA; Geospatial Data (e.g., QGIS/R); Data mining and scraping; Machine Learning (e.g., RF, K-Means); Text Analysis
  • Software Proficiency: R, QGIS, SQL, STATA, JMP, Python, Google App Script, SAS, SPSS, Excel VBA, LaTeX
  • Statistical Methods: Difference-in-Differences; Survey Experiments; Granger Causality; OLS; Multilevel Models; Logistic Regression; Survival Analysis (Weibull, Cox-PH); Random Forest; Generalized Additive Models; Change Point Analysis; Principal Component Analysis, etc.
  • Created Dynamic Visualizations: Drivers of Fishery-Related Militarized Disputes ShinyApp – Shows dynamic global annual map of temperature anomalies, fish stock, and fishery-related MID dyads.
  • Created R Packages and Apps: BreakFinder: Enables comprehensive change point analysis by iterating through all variables in data, revealing abrupt transitions in aggregate.