Stephen Shellman

Stephen Shellman, a research scientist at the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations, College of William and Mary, conducts research on global terrorism, and other social disruptions, and assesses their impact on national security. In addition, as President and Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Analysis Enterprises (SAE), Stephen Shellman uses a variety of academic tools, such as quantitative analysis and software modeling, to study real world socio-political situations. Clients for his analytic services include the Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Lab, Strategic Command, and U.S. Pacific Command.

With a large body of published work, Shellman’s research includes such topics as “Analyzing Political and Social Regional Stability with Statistics” and “Quantifying Violence and Nonviolence: Terrorism and Political Violence Datasets.” Highly regarded for his national security expertise, Stephen Shellman provides consulting services for the government, including the Navy, Air Force, and the Department of Defense Research and Engineering.
His recent publications include his book, Taking Turns: A Theory and Model of Government-Dissident Interactions, based on his dissertation from Florida State University, and “Instant Data, Just Add Dictionaries: Political Analysis Using Automated Event Data and Sentiment Coding.” Other peer reviewed research covers a wide range of geo-political issues, such as intrastate conflict, refugees and migrations, Iranian public opinion on nuclear weapons, economic deprivation in Haiti, as well as research investigating the effect of simulations on learning, and studying time series intervals and statistical inferences. Some of current topics of interest that Stephen Shellman is pursuing involve domestic and regional terrorism in India.

In 2008, Stephen Shellman received a $300,000 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) for an Automated Sentiment Analysis program. More recently, Stephen Shellman received a $467,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the DOD-NSF Minerva Project, and also in 2009-2011, he received a $1.5 million contract from DARPA for an Integrated Crisis Early Warning System.

Stephen Shellman graduated from Florida State University with a Ph.D. in Political Science, and completed additional coursework at the University of Michigan on quantitative methods in social research.