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Meet the Team

Libby Hemphill

Libby Hemphill – RMCD Director
Prior to joining ICPSR as RCMD director in September 2017, Hemphill was at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she was Associate Professor of Communication and Information Studies in the Lewis College of Human Sciences. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan's School of Information. Her research is interdisciplinary and draws on theory and methods from communication studies, information science, and computer science to investigate online behavior. Her greatest scholarly impact has been in the area of political expression in social media, in particular the development of the #Polar Score which can be used to identify the partisan valence of a Twitter stream (e.g., allowing determination of an individual politician?s partisan orientation). Hemphill?s current research, supported by the National Science Foundation, examines how social media can be used by rural and marginalized urban populations to increase civic engagement. Her research and engagement with the changing role of data and data access to underrepresented and marginalized communities fits with and will provide a valuable basis for leadership of the Resource Center for Minority Data at ICPSR.

David Thomas

David L. Thomas – RCMD Project/Processing Manager
David Thomas has been with ICPSR since 2003 and an University of Michigan employee since 2001. As a processing supervisor he supervises staff in both the General Archive and RCMD. He began his ICPSR career by processing ABC News/Washington Post and CBS News/New York Times polls. Now, his team is responsible for processing public opinion polls for ICPSR. In addition to polling data, his team processes the National Election Pool data, the American National Election Survey data, American Community Survey, and the Latino National Survey for ICPSR.

Previous Directors

Woody Neighbors

Harold (Woody) Neighbors
Harold W. Neighbors is Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education and former Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health, where he is the Principal Investigator of a 15-year research education program, "Promoting Ethnic Diversity in Public Health Doctoral Research." Dr. Neighbors is also former Director of the Program for Research on Black Americans at the Institute for Social Research. He has over 30 years of experience investigating the health of Black Americans with an emphasis on racial disparities in depression and the use of professional services. Dr. Neighbors specializes in the recruitment of difficult-to-reach population groups. He has been PI on a multi-site study of racial differences in the diagnosis of depression and recently completed a four-city investigation of help-seeking for depression among Black men. He has a long-standing interest in ethno-cultural differences chronic disease management with an emphasis on depression, diabetes, and periodontal disease. His research addresses the challenges associated with taking a personal perspective on health that emphasizes the ability of Black Americans, regardless of SES and social context, to overcome the individual and structural determinants that degrade health. Dr. Neighbors is committed to developing behavioral interventions that build upon personal resilience to manage stress and chronic disease.

John Garcia

John Garcia
John Garcia, Ph.D. was the director of the Resource Center for Minority Data (RCMD) at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan until 2015. In addition to directing RCMD, Dr. Garcia was an integral part of the ICPSR summer internship for undergraduates.

Dr. Garcia holds Emeritus Professorships at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy and at the University of Michigan. His primary areas of research and teaching are minority group politics, political behavior, political mobilization, urban politics, social survey research and public policy. His books include "Latino Politics in America: Community, Culture, and Interests" and "Latino Lives in America." One of his most well-known data contributions is the Latino National Survey (ICPSR 20862).