Profile

Fields: I am a (largely) empirical political scientist working at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics

My research seeks to understand the causes of political order, the evolution of the international system, and the origins of the set of institutions identified with the modern territorial state. A second line of work explores the origins and impact of institutional constraints on executives, highlighting the endogeneity of institutional choices and the centrality of non-institutional factors (e.g., primitives like power, interests, identities, and ideas) in political and economic development. I am currently working on a series of papers that advance tools for preference elicitation in political science.

Courses taught

• PSCI/INTR 106 Introduction to International Relations
• PSCI 107 Introduction to Positive Political Theory
• PSCI/INTR 259 Order, Violence, and the State
• PSCI/INTR 389W Senior Honors Seminar
• PSCI/INTR 393W Senior Honors Project
• PSCI 507 Experiments in Political Science Research
• PSCI 551 State Building and Conflict
• PSCI 569 State Formation
• PSCI 572 International Relations Field Seminar II
• PSCI 576 Graduate Research Seminar