Campus News

Renowned political methodologist to give UGA Parthemos Lecture

Athens, Ga. – Gary King, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University, will deliver the George S. Parthemos Lecture on March 4 at 10:30 a.m. in Room 348 of the Miller Learning Center on the University of Georgia campus.

King is known for his work on legislative redistricting. Widely read across scholarly fields and beyond academia, his work has been used in most American states by legislators, judges, and other interested parties, and has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. King also led an evaluation of the Mexican universal health insurance program, which includes the largest randomized health policy experiment to date. And, his contributions to methods for achieving cross-cultural comparability in survey research have been used in surveys in more than 80 countries.

“We are honored to have such an important scholar share his time with our students and faculty,” said John Maltese, head of the department of political science. “He has made significant theoretical contributions to our discipline, and his work has very important practical applications that have been used by public policymakers and practitioners throughout the world.”

King has been elected a fellow in six honorary societies, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as president of the Society for Political Methodology and vice president of the American Political Science Association. He is the author of over 125 journal articles and eight books, as well as 15 open source software packages. He has won more than 30 “best of” awards for his work.

Hosted by the School of Public and International Affairs’ department of political science, his public lecture, “Computer-Assisted Clustering and Conceptualization from Text,” identifies a new approach to identifying useful information from large quantities of unstructured text. His talk will focus on the use of computers to aid humans in creating useful categorizations. During his two-day residency at the University of Georgia, King will teach a class and interact with faculty and students.

This lecture honors George S. Parthemos, the late political science professor who taught at the University of Georgia from 1953 until his death in 1984. During his distinguished career at the university, Parthemos served as an Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor, head of the department of political science, and vice president for instruction.

For more information on the School of Public and International Affairs, see http://spia.uga.edu/.

For more information on the department of political science, see
http://uga.edu/pol-sci/home/index.htm.