About

Graeme Blair is a Professor of Political Science at UCLA and co-director of the Deportation Data Project. His research focuses on state violence and improving the credibility, ethics, and usefulness of social science. Blair's work addresses critical issues such as policing, violence, and the state, with a particular emphasis on community policing and its effects on crime and police-citizen relationships. He has contributed to a major research initiative that uses coordinated field experiments across diverse political contexts to evaluate the efficacy of community policing, revealing mixed results regarding its ability to build trust or reduce crime. Blair's scholarship also explores the dynamics of armed conflict, including the strategic behavior of armed groups in resource-rich areas and the impact of conflict on investment decisions in sectors like mining. Additionally, he investigates access to justice for survivors of violence against women, analyzing the outcomes of gender-based police reforms. His interdisciplinary approach combines empirical research with theoretical insights to advance understanding of complex social and political phenomena related to violence, conflict, and governance.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Mathematics
• Economics
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Monetary economics
• Environmental resource management
• Market economy
• Environmental planning
• Environmental science
• Public relations
• World Wide Web
• Advertising
• Law
• Criminology
• Business
• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Social psychology
• Finance

Selected publications

• Replication Data for: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Nationwide Individual-Level Enforcement Dataset

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-04-10

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This dataset, based on records obtained by Freedom of Information Act request, tracks United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) individual enforcement actions from September 2023 through July 2025. The dataset includes five tables, linked by anonymized individual identifiers, tracking ICE encounters, detainer requests, arrests, detentions, and removals. The dataset creates new opportunities for descriptive and causal research on recent changes in immigration enforcement policy in the United States.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kosuke Imai

  Harvard University

  66 shared

• Jason Lyall

  43 shared

• Macartan Humphreys

  24 shared

• Alexander Coppock

  Yale University

  24 shared

• Jacob N. Shapiro

  Princeton University

  18 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Politics

  Princeton University

  2016

• B.A., Political Science

  Reed College

  2006

Awards & honors

• Best book award from the American Political Science Associat…