Now
What I’m working on this month.
May 2026
Currently writing. Co-authored work on retrospective economic voting and Latino electoral volatility — the argument that the swings in Latino vote share over the past two decades are partially predictable from a group whose partisan attachments are structurally weaker, making the economy–vote link bigger than for White or Black voters. Three empirical strategies (macropartisanship time series, CES vote-switching, county-level unemployment) are starting to converge. Also continuing to refine the dissertation work on Latino independents and economic messaging.
Currently building. Bobology — a slowly-accumulating philosophy of small steady voices. The Bobble Canon now sits at v2.7: forty parables, Bobbisms, codas, and a glossary, with new entries appended as they arrive. The canon and the rest of the not-academic writing live at dereksleepfield.com — kept there quietly, on its own shelf. The project is meant to grow slowly. (“A Bobble could, in principle, work fast. In practice, the hum interferes.”)
Currently obsessing over. How AI agents fit into the working stack of a research-active social scientist without flattening the parts that need not to be flattened. Concretely, that means: triaging student final-project submissions into structured forward-memos, drafting per-student feedback at scale, pulling CMAG ad-data analyses through narrow conversation windows, and shoving small writing tasks across the line from “I’ll do that someday” to “done by Friday.” The honest answer to where humans should still hold the pen keeps changing, which is itself the interesting thing.
Currently teaching. Bucknell, spring 2026 wrap-up. Reflecting on what to carry forward and what to reshape for the fall.
Currently outside the academy. Making video games and apps. Some out soon.
Last updated: May 2026.