About

I am a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Government, University of Essex. I was awarded a PhD from University College London (UCL) in 2019.

My areas of expertise are international relations and comparative politics. My research agenda focuses on migrant and refugee movement, international development, and immigration policy. Methodologically, I specialize in field and survey experiments, as well as computational methods.

My research is published or forthcoming in journals such as PNAS, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science and International Studies Quarterly.

My research has been supported by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Leverhulme Trust, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Since January 2021, I am co-Investigator on a Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Methods Development Grant titled: “The Diffusion of Development: Extending RCTs with Agent-Based Modelling to Understand Spillovers of Development Interventions.”

Research

CV

Selected Publications

Simon, Miranda, Schwartz, Cassilde and Hudson, David (conditionally accepted) Can Foreign Aid Reduce the Desire to Emigrate? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial. American Journal of Political Science.

Christensen, James and Simon, Miranda (2023). Using Aid to Control Migration. Political Studies (applied political theory)

Simon, Miranda, Schwartz, Cassilde and Hudson, David (2022). Covid-19 Insecurities and Migration Aspirations. International Interactions.

Ghosn, Faten, Chu, Tiffany, Simon, Miranda, Braithwaite, Alex, Frith, Michael and Jandali, Joanna (2021). The Journey Home: Violence, Anchoring, and Refugee Decisions to Return. American Political Science Review.

Schwartz, Cassilde, Simon, Miranda, Hudson, David, Johnson, Shane D. (2020). Law Breaking and Law Bending: How International Migrants Negotiate with State Borders. International Studies Quarterly.

Schwartz, Cassilde, Simon, Miranda, Hudson, David, Hudson, Jennifer (2020). A Populist Paradox? How Brexit Softened Anti-Immigrant Attitudes. British Journal of Political Science.

Simon, Miranda (2019). Path Dependency and Adaptation: The Effects of Policy on Migration Systems — Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation.

Simon, Miranda, Schwartz, Cassilde, Hudson, David, and Johnson, Shane D. (2018). A data-driven computational model on the effects of immigration policies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Belur, Jyoti, Tompson, Lisa, Thornton, Amy and Simon, Miranda (2018). Inter-rater reliability in systematic review methodology: exploring variation in coder decision-making. Sociological Methods and Research.

Media

“A data-driven computational model on the effects of immigration policies” was covered by the The Guardian, The Independent and La Presse.

“A Populist Paradox? How Brexit Softened Anti-Immigrant Attitudes” was covered by Forbes and Al Jazeera