Sacha Bechara - Principal Investigator
Final-year Politics and International Relations student at University College London. Former student of Lycée Henri IV (Paris), where I developed an appreciation for rigorous pedagogy and the principle that knowledge transmission, particularly horizontal transmission between peers, is among the most valuable forms of intellectual exchange.
Following my undergraduate degree, I plan to pursue an MSc in Statistics or Data Science before returning to doctoral work in political science.
Research Interests
Climate Litigation and Judicial Behavior
I study how judicial ideology influences decision-making in climate cases, developing measurement frameworks for judicial discretion and case outcomes. This work involves building open-source databases and transparent methodological protocols for empirical legal studies.
Child Sexual Abuse Underreporting
I study the epidemiology and politics of child sexual abuse reporting patterns, with particular interest in agent-based modeling approaches. My focus is on learning how to develop better measurement instruments and, ultimately, how to best define and measure underreporting as a latent, unobservable quantity. The goal is to reduce uncertainty in our quantification of underreporting dynamics across multiple social levels: family, school, and community contexts.
Experience and Development Work
- Research Assistant, Save the Children UK (Social Data Institute) – health econometrics and policy analysis
- Founder, ESCLL – climate litigation database development
- In development: Open-source geocoded database of police-reported offenses with longitudinal socioeconomic data for major US cities (Los Angeles, Chicago), examining spatial patterns in crime reporting
- Developed: pacerR, an R package for automated retrieval and network analysis of PACER court documents
Ethics and Thoughts on Collaboration
I view research as collaborative learning. Knowledge advances through systematic inquiry, methodological transparency, and genuine intellectual exchange between researchers at all levels. The best learning environments combine rigorous standards with accessible entry points, maintaining high expectations without gatekeeping.
I am frustrated by credentialism in academic and professional opportunities. Students seeking research experience often face positions requiring prior experience or offering unpaid work that amounts to data entry rather than substantive research. When barriers exist, whether someone lacks specific skills or methodological knowledge, the response should be training and resource provision, not exclusion. Much of what passes for academic engagement emphasizes networking and credential-accumulation over intellectual substance. These practices tend to favor those with resources to work unpaid and access to existing networks.
This motivated the ESCLL's approach. While I could not offer salaries and all research assistants volunteered their time, I took on the responsibility of providing flexibility and individual support. I conducted individual interviews and maintained ongoing conversations throughout the project to understand how each person's work could benefit them specifically. I tailored coding tasks accordingly: focusing on appellate decision analysis for those seeking experience in appellate law, measurement and reliability tasks for those preparing dissertations involving data collection, and providing structured training materials for those newer to legal document analysis.
Research collaboration should center on substantive work: systematic inquiry, methodological engagement, and intellectual contribution. I aim to create environments where commitment and learning drive participation rather than prior credentials or capacity to work unpaid.
Inspired by open-source principles, I believe research outputs should be publicly available, methodologies fully documented, and barriers to participation minimized where possible.
Contact
sacha.bechara.23@ucl.ac.uk
GitHub: sachabechara
Amelia Ahmed - Project Lead & Team Manager
Data Science, UCL
BSc Data Science student (2023–2026) at UCL. Interested in using data to support healthcare and humanitarian work. Joined ESCLL in Phase 1 and now leads project management and team coordination.
Contact: ahmea3517.316@hotmail.com
Alessandra De Lucia - Legal Researcher
Law, City St George's
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