About

I am Provost Associate Professor in the Department of Government at American University’s School of Public Affairs, where I also serve as Graduate Program Director. My research spans comparative politics, the political economy of development, and political behavior.

My research examines how different sources of state revenue — taxation, natural resources, and foreign aid — shape governance and political behavior. I also study the causes of intergroup conflict and prejudice, and interventions designed to mitigate them.

My most recent research takes a broader view of intervention effects. I study the conditions under which prejudice reduction, campaign persuasion, and other interventions aimed at social change move private attitudes and behaviors, public attitudes and behaviors, or both. I also examine how effects shape preference falsification by widening or narrowing the gap between people’s private and public attitudes and behaviors, with implications for understanding the potential and limits of such interventions to achieve social change.

I am a Co-Director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium (DEC), a global network of researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners working to understand and counter democratic erosion through evidence-based approaches. I am also a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network and a co-convener of the Northeast Workshop in Empirical Political Science (NEWEPS).

Previously, I was an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh; a fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University; and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. I received my Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.