Fellows Program

If you are a Wellesley student looking to do a year-long study and research in one of the areas of math and politics, please write to us at contact@math-democracy.org. As an IMD Fellow, you would work closely with an IMD-affiliated Wellesley faculty. The fall semester is typically devoted to learning about the intersection of mathematics and democracy (voting systems, legislative apportionment, districting and gerrymandering, power distribution, social choice theory, etc.) . The spring semester involves individual or group research projects. The program also includes at least one public presentation at an IMD-organized event.

In addition to selecting the topic that best fits your interests, you can opt to focus on theory-heavy projects or more applied ones; the latter often involve a statistics and data analysis component. Some recent projects have included the study of hypergraphs and political structures, power distribution in the UN Security Council, simplicial complexes and quantification of power, category-theoretic approach to Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, compactness measures of gerrymandering, proportional representation, and political quantitative literacy in K-12 education.

If you are not a Wellesley student but are interested in this program, please write to us as we are currently working on expanding it to students from other institutions.

See below for more information about the Fellows Program from past years.