NFC Doctoral Fellow Lecture | Firdaous Sbai
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Organized by: Northrop Frye Centre — https://www.eventbrite.com/o/54685355533
CSUS-NFC Doctoral Fellow, Firdaous Sbaï, will be giving a talk entitled, "Polarization or Shifting Alignments?".
The Northrop Frye Centre is pleased to announce the next event in our Doctoral Fellow Lecture Series. Please join Firdaous Sbaï for her lecture on November 18, 2026 in VC102 at 4 p.m.
Light snacks and refreshments will be served.
Polarization or Shifting Alignments? Tracing Multidimensional Changes in American Belief Systems
How predictable and structured is public opinion? How stable are the dimensions that organize people’s attitudes in the United States? This attitude structure is generally conceptualized as a mapping of ties with varying strength between different attitudes, such that certain opinions might reliably predict others in the general public. Establishing “what goes with what” across opinions has important implications across the social sciences. For cultural sociologists and social psychologists, these patterns reveal the schemas that underlie social differentiation and group behaviour. For political analysts, this structure anchors the macro-political landscape, as measures of ideology, disagreements, and polarization all depend on it.
Furthermore, looking at how this opinion structure evolves over time raises important questions about the trajectory of population-level ideological disagreements. Notably, recent debates have been concerned with whether this evolution is pointing to rising polarization. Are people’s ideological profiles becoming more and more one-dimensional, such that attitudes tend to neatly predict each other and sort people into two camps? To what extent are previous areas of cross-cutting agreement collapsing? Are some beliefs still uncaptured by Left-Right or Liberal-Conservative camps? This research uses novel modeling to measure the extent of ideological polarization in recent decades, exploring different aspects of what we might mean by “polarization”. I present the specific belief domains that have shifted in recent years in the ideological space, and highlight the implications for political actors seeking to mobilize or convince the public.
About the Speaker
Firdaous Sbaï is a PhD candidate in the sociology department at the University of Toronto. Her work is broadly nested in political sociology and quantitative methods. Her research addresses questions spanning ideological heterogeneity, social movements, carceral systems, and violence. She previously received the Best Student Paper award from the Canadian Sociological Association.
CSUS-NFC Doctoral Fellow, Firdaous Sbaï, will be giving a talk entitled, "Polarization or Shifting Alignments?".
The Northrop Frye Centre is pleased to announce the next event in our Doctoral Fellow Lecture Series. Please join Firdaous Sbaï for her lecture on November 18, 2026 in VC102 at 4 p.m.
Light snacks and refreshments will be served.
Polarization or Shifting Alignments? Tracing Multidimensional Changes in American Belief Systems
How predictable and structured is public opinion? How stable are the dimensions that organize people’s attitudes in the United States? This attitude structure is generally conceptualized as a mapping of ties with varying strength between different attitudes, such that certain opinions might reliably predict others in the general public. Establishing “what goes with what” across opinions has important implications across the social sciences. For cultural sociologists and social psychologists, these patterns reveal the schemas that underlie social differentiation and group behaviour. For political analysts, this structure anchors the macro-political landscape, as measures of ideology, disagreements, and polarization all depend on it.
Furthermore, looking at how this opinion structure evolves over time raises important questions about the trajectory of population-level ideological disagreements. Notably, recent debates have been concerned with whether this evolution is pointing to rising polarization. Are people’s ideological profiles becoming more and more one-dimensional, such that attitudes tend to neatly predict each other and sort people into two camps? To what extent are previous areas of cross-cutting agreement collapsing? Are some beliefs still uncaptured by Left-Right or Liberal-Conservative camps? This research uses novel modeling to measure the extent of ideological polarization in recent decades, exploring different aspects of what we might mean by “polarization”. I present the specific belief domains that have shifted in recent years in the ideological space, and highlight the implications for political actors seeking to mobilize or convince the public.
About the Speaker
Firdaous Sbaï is a PhD candidate in the sociology department at the University of Toronto. Her work is broadly nested in political sociology and quantitative methods. Her research addresses questions spanning ideological heterogeneity, social movements, carceral systems, and violence. She previously received the Best Student Paper award from the Canadian Sociological Association.
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Where is it happening?
Northrop Frye Centre (VC 102), 91 Charles St West, Toronto, ON M5S1K5, CA, Canada
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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