David Van Dijcke

David Van Dijcke

PhD student in Economics @ University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

Project Overview

Academic personal website for David Van Dijcke (Economics PhD, U of Michigan). Built with Jekyll on the Academic Pages template (fork of Minimal Mistakes). Hosted on GitHub Pages at davidvandijcke.github.io.

Development Commands

# Local dev server (requires ruby-dev, bundler, nodejs)
bundle exec jekyll liveserve    # serves at localhost:4000

# JS minification
npm run build:js                # one-shot minify
npm run watch:js                # watch + rebuild on change

# Generate publication/WP markdown from CSV
cd markdown_generator && python publications.py   # outputs to _publications/ and _wps/
cd markdown_generator && python media.py          # outputs to _media/

No Gemfile in repo (intentionally removed for security). If you need one locally, create it with gem "github-pages".

Architecture

Content Pipeline

Publications and working papers flow through two paths:

  1. CSV → Markdown generator: Edit markdown_generator/publications2.csv or wps.csv, then run publications.py to regenerate markdown files in _publications/ and _wps/.
  2. Direct markdown editing: Edit files directly in _publications/ or _wps/.

Front matter format for publications/WPs:

---
title: "Paper Title"
collection: publications  # or wps
permalink: /publication/YYYY-MM-DD-slug/
coauthors: "Author1, Author2"
excerpt: 'Abstract text'
date: YYYY-MM-DD
venue: 'Journal Name'
paperurl: 'https://...'
field: 'Econometrics'  # or 'Policy' — used for grouping on research page
media: '[Outlet](url)'
workingpaper: '[WP Version](url)'
replication: '[Code](url)'
---

Research Page (_pages/research.md)

This is the most complex page. It uses Liquid templating to display publications in an explicit hardcoded order (JMP first, then 7 selected papers by title matching). The order is defined via `` variables at the top. Remaining papers display after the selected ones, grouped by field (Econometrics vs. Policy). To reorder or add selected papers, edit the variable assignments and the targets concatenation string.

Each entry renders via _includes/publication-entry.html, which supports collapsible abstracts, media links, working paper versions, and replication materials.

Theme System

Active theme: _sass/custom/light-theme.scss. The _sass/custom/ directory contains ~16 alternative theme files from iterative design — only light-theme.scss and publications.scss are actively used. Others are historical.

Edit _data/navigation.yml. Current sections: Research, CV, Code and Data, Media.

Key Pages

  • _pages/about.md — Homepage (permalink: /)
  • _pages/research.md — Research page with explicit publication ordering
  • _pages/cv.md — Links to CV PDF in /files/
  • _pages/code.md — Code and data resources
  • _pages/media.md — Media appearances

Research Assistant Apps

  • ai-assistant/ — Simple Gradio assistant with hardcoded knowledge base
  • david-research-assistant/ — Advanced RAG assistant using LangChain + Gemini API (git submodule)

Both deploy to Hugging Face Spaces. See their respective README files.

Collections

Defined in _config.yml: publications, wps, media, talks, teaching, portfolio. Each outputs to /:collection/:path/.