Olgahan Cat
Biography
Olgahan is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods in Political Science at Brown University. His research examines public attitudes and behaviors toward migration, including responses to immigrants, refugees, and emigrants across diverse contexts such as the United States, Turkey, and Eastern Europe.
At Brown, Olgahan teaches PhD-level courses in Statistics (I-II), Causal Inference and Experimental Methods. His research has been published in outlets such as International Studies Quarterly and PNAS Nexus.
Olgahan holds a Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.
Research
He investigates both attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, exploring how beliefs about national identity, deservingness, and belonging shape public opinion and policy preferences.
His dissertation introduces the concept of Projected Patriotism, which captures beliefs about how others ought to demonstrate loyalty to their own country. This concept provides a novel lens for understanding cross-national variation in responses to forcibly displaced populations, shedding light on why some communities are more welcoming or restrictive than others. This project serves as the foundation for his broader research agenda on migration and forced displacement, integrating experimental methods - including survey experiments and field experiments - with observational studies. He further explores how technological governance, such as AI-assisted immigration systems, wartime contexts, and border policies, interact with citizens’ perceptions of migrants and inform both policy outcomes and political behavior.
Publications
Behavioral nudges in social media ads show limited ability to encourage COVID-19 vaccination across countries. PNAS Nexus (with Jiseon Chang, Roman Hlatky, Huimin Li, and Daniel L. Nielson) 2024
Aiding war: Foreign aid and the intensity of violent armed conflict. International Studies Quarterly (with Michael G. Findley, Joseph K. Young, and Daniel Strandow) 2023
Teaching
Quantitative Research Methods I
Quantitative Research Methods II
Causal Inference
Experimental Methods