Ehsan Nouri
Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Digital Technology for Democracy Lab,
Karsh Institute of Democracy, University of Virginia
ehsan@virginia.edu
Karsh Institute of Democracy, University of Virginia
ehsan@virginia.edu
I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab at the
University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy. I study how digital platforms shape
collective behavior from the bottom up, tracing how local interactions among individuals
aggregate into higher-order patterns such as coordination, shared understanding, emotional
contagion, and emergent conventions. I earned my PhD in Management Information Systems
from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and my work draws on computational
methods, organizational theory, and complex adaptive systems.
My work is anchored in the perspective that people and technologies both operate as
information-processing agents within complex sociotechnical systems. I examine how digital
infrastructures, algorithms, and interaction mechanisms shape what individuals notice, what
they can communicate, and how they coordinate with one another. Computational modeling and
behavioral experiments let me trace those effects from micro-level decisions and technology
use to macro-level social dynamics.
Beyond academic work, I have a deep interest in Persian poetry and occasionally write my own. My favorite poets include Fereydoun Moshiri and Forough Farrokhzad, whose depth and complexity of emotion and meaning illuminate both personal reflection and the prolonged sufferings and collective experiences of Iranians across generations. Philosophy is another one of my quiet delights, especially the exploration of value and moral clarity in times of cultural transformation. I believe meaningful change begins with a thoughtful understanding of the guiding philosophies that shape human and societal value. These grounding ideas help us reinterpret tradition and imagine the future with responsibility and continuity, rather than reinventing every wheel. Much of the loss of meaning and direction in the modern world arises from discarding the compass we already possess and attempting to redraw a landscape we have not yet understood. This perspective shapes both my scholarship and my broader reflections on human experience.