About

Michael W. Doyle is a University Professor at Columbia University, a title he received in 2015, which is the highest academic rank at Columbia. He is a full-time faculty member at Columbia Law School, the School of International Public Affairs, and the Department of Political Science. Doyle is a renowned scholar of global constitutionalism, international affairs, and democratic peace theory. His research focuses on international relations theory, international security, international organizations, and the global regime for migration. He is the author of a dozen books, including recent titles such as Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War (2023), The Question of Intervention: John Stuart Mill and the Responsibility to Protect (2015), and Liberal Peace: Selected Essays (2011). Doyle's work has significantly contributed to the understanding of liberal democracies and their relationship to war, stimulating extensive research and policy debate. He has received multiple awards from the American Political Science Association, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Doyle has held prominent roles supporting international initiatives, including serving as assistant secretary-general and special adviser for policy planning at the United Nations under Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and has led the development of the Model International Mobility Convention. His academic career includes positions at Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Warwick, where he received an honorary degree.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Biochemistry
• Biology
• Neuroscience
• Chemistry
• Pathology
• Genetics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Techno-organisational network and reliable implementation of GPS technology for people with dementia and their caregivers in the community

  Disability and Rehabilitation Assistive Technology · 2025-05-04

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  METHODS: Fourteen individual dyads (a person with dementia and nominated caregiver) out of 45 who received GPS trackers and were followed for six months as part of a GPS feasibility trial attended focus group interviews. The focus group was guided by semi-structured questions based on three primary outcomes: reduced burden of care (care factors), quality of life of the wearer (wearer factors), and practicalities of the device (device factors). Data was coded inductively using NVivo Pro version 12.6.1, and analysis was guided by qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: The findings suggest that family caregivers experienced reduced stress and anxiety when using GPS technology since they could pinpoint the exact location of the person with dementia at any given time. The effectiveness or otherwise of socio-material actors (e.g., individuals with dementia, GPS device features, mobile networks, neighbours') informed caregivers' overall experience and determined how much longer the technology was used. These factors were crucial in the social inclusion of individuals with dementia in public spaces and in deciding whether GPS technology could delay early admission into 24-hour care. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight important practical implications. Implementation of GPS technology in community family care settings relies on the effective delegation of roles among various human (carers, wearers, neighbours) and non-human (devices, mobile networks, GPS systems) actors.

  PublisherDOI

• “Forced Migrants,” Human Rights, and “Climate Refugees”

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-01-09

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Impact of Comments on LLM Comprehension of Legacy Code

  ArXiv.org · 2025-04-23

  preprintOpen access

  Large language models (LLMs) have been increasingly integrated into software engineering and maintenance tasks due to their high performance with software engineering tasks and robust understanding of modern programming languages. However, the ability of LLMs to comprehend code written with legacy languages remains a research gap challenged by real-world legacy systems lacking or containing inaccurate documentation that may impact LLM comprehension. To assess LLM comprehension of legacy languages, there is a need for objective LLM evaluation. In order to objectively measure LLM comprehension of legacy languages, we need an efficient, quantitative evaluation method. We leverage multiple-choice question answering (MCQA), an emerging LLM evaluation methodology, to evaluate LLM comprehension of legacy code and the impact of comment prevalence and inaccurate comments. In this work, we present preliminary findings on the impact of documentation on LLM comprehension of legacy code and outline strategic objectives for future work.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Coping Strategies To Enhance Mental Health and Wellbeing of Ethnic Minority Populations in the United Kingdom: A Scoping Review

  Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health · 2025-08-25

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Mental health issues among ethnic minority populations in the UK are a significant concern. Synthesised evidence related to coping strategies to improve mental health among these groups is lacking. This scoping review aimed to identify and consolidate literature on coping strategies used by ethnic minority groups in the UK to overcome their mental health problems. This review reflects a strengths-based approach that emphasises how ethnic minority populations deploy coping strategies in response to mental health challenges, rather than merely focusing on barriers. This scoping review was guided by the methodological framework provided by Arksey and O'Malley. Literature was searched in MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Science Direct databases. The review result was reported following the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist. A total of 2888 records were identified from the database search after removing the duplicates, and 17 records were included in the review. Different coping strategies and their barriers and challenges were identified and presented under three primary themes: (i) Self-help and immediate personal and social support networks, (ii) Community-based and professional mental health services, and (iii) Challenges and barriers. A broader understanding of the community strengths and resources of ethnic minorities and their adequate integration with mental health services can strengthen the existing efforts in improving the mental health of ethnic minority populations in the UK.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A holistic approach to human mobility: the Model International Mobility Convention

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-09-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Leveraging LLMs for Legacy Code Modernization: Evaluation of LLM-Generated Documentation

  2025-05-03 · 3 citations

  article

  Legacy software systems, written in outdated languages like MUMPS and mainframe assembly, pose challenges in efficiency, maintenance, staffing, and security. While LLMs offer promise for modernizing these systems, their ability to understand legacy languages is largely unknown. This paper investigates the utilization of LLMs to generate documentation for legacy code using two datasets: an electronic health records (EHR) system in MUMPS and an open-source application in IBM mainframe Assembly Language Code (ALC). We propose a prompting strategy for generating line-wise code comments and a rubric to evaluate their completeness, readability, usefulness, and hallucination. Our study assesses the correlation between human evaluations and automated metrics, such as code complexity and reference-based metrics. We find that LLM-generated comments for MUMPS and ALC are generally hallucination-free, complete, readable, and useful compared to ground-truth comments, though ALC poses challenges. However, no automated metrics strongly correlate with comment quality to predict or measure LLM performance. Our findings highlight the limitations of current automated measures and the need for better evaluation metrics for LLM-generated documentation in legacy systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Mental health experiences and coping strategies of ethnic minority adolescents in England

  European Journal of Public Health · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Background Children and young people (CYP) or adolescents from ethnic minorities and disadvantaged communities are at a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health due to various factors, including discrimination, socioeconomic inequalities, cultural barriers, and mental health stigma, however coping strategies or support they receive to overcome their mental health remain dysfunctional. Methods This research used a participatory co-production design to engage with Asian or Asian British CYP aged 10-19 years to understand their perceptions and experiences of mental health and wellbeing, mental health services access and utilisation, and examined coping strategies, formal or informal support used by them to overcome their poor mental health. We conducted fourteen semi-structured interviews with CYP, followed by a participatory co-production workshop with twelve stakeholders. Results The key findings from this research were summarised in the four overarching themes: i) Perceptions of CYP towards mental health and its services; ii) Practices of coping strategies; iii) Challenges and barriers in dealing with mental health at family and society level; iv) Challenges and barriers in dealing with mental health at the institutional level. Stigma, cultural barriers, misconceptions and fear of discrimination were some of the key issues that shaped perceptions of CYP towards mental health and available services. CYP relied mainly on informal support received from peers or family members because of confidentiality and trust issues with healthcare providers due to a lack of culturally sensitive support services and underrepresentation of health professionals from minority groups. Conclusions Despite several efforts implemented for mental health promotion among ethnic minority groups, they are still struggling to access professional support services to manage their mental health issues effectively and lack adequate knowledge and skills on healthy coping strategies. Key messages • CYP from minority groups still struggle to access professional support services to manage their mental health issues effectively and lack adequate knowledge and skills on healthy coping strategies. • The compounded impact of interrelated socioeconomic and cultural factors creates complex barriers for CYP from ethnic minority groups towards accessing and receiving appropriate mental health services.

  PublisherDOI

• Eliminating Extreme Inequality

  2025-03-27

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract The growing inequality in the U.S., China, and many countries around the world suggested that the reduction in inequality should be one of the goals that the world should focus on. Michael Doyle, formerly Assistant Secretary General of the UN and a colleague of the author’s at Columbia University (in both the Law School and Political Science Department), teamed up with the author to push for the adoption of an inequality goal as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter, written with Doyle, emphasizes not only the economic consequences, but the political consequences, especially when there are significant inequalities across groups within a country, that can even lead to conflict. The chapter argues that attention should be centered on extreme inequality, and suggests a particular measure, the Palma ratio, the ratio of share of the richest 10% of the population to that of the poorest 40%.

  PublisherDOI

• Towards an understanding of Indigenous arrest

  Australian Institute of Criminology eBooks · 2024-05-21

  bookOpen access

  This study examines the correlates of First Nations contact with the criminal justice system. Key risk factors include membership of the stolen generation, psychological distress, and having used illicit drugs and alcohol over the preceding 12 months. The latter increases the marginal risk of arrest by 14 percentage points. The strongest protective factors are completing school, having an income in the top four deciles, having a permanent home, being aged 51 or over and living in a remote area. Completing school is the strongest protective factor, reducing the risk of arrest by eight percentage points. Further research using a longitudinal dataset specifically designed to identify causal effects is required.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mental health nursing education: dissonance of philosophy, pedagogy and praxis

  British Journal of Mental Health Nursing · 2024-11-02

  articleSenior author

  Brown and colleagues summarise the evolution of mental health nursing education and practice, exploring the causes behind the dissonance between pedagogy and praxis and its impact on the nursing field.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nicholas Sambanis

  Yale University

  76 shared

• Atul Kohli

  72 shared

• George W. Downs

  72 shared

• Richard Challener

  72 shared

• Paul E. Sigmund

  63 shared

• Bruce Bueno

  63 shared

• Robert Gilpin

  Royal Military College of Canada

  63 shared

• Lynn White Hi

  Johns Hopkins University

  63 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Princeton University

• B.A.

  University of Warwick

Awards & honors

• LL.D., honorary, University of Warwick 2014
• Inducted into the American Academy of Political and Social S…
• Hubert Humphrey Award of the American Political Science Asso…
• Charles Merriam Award of the American Political Science Asso…
• Inducted into the American Philosophical Society 2009