I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. My research focuses broadly on nationalism, citizenship, and social engineering, especially in the authoritarian contexts of the Middle East.  My first book, Bedouins into Bourgeois: Remaking Citizens for Globalization, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Other published research focuses on the politics of knowledge and expertise, authoritarian governance, media effects on political attitudes, and issues in international security, particularly networked structures and the social and organizational drivers of innovation. I earned my Ph.D. from Yale University in political science where my main fields were comparative politics, international relations, and Middle East politics with an additional field certification in methodology.

Before beginning my doctoral work, I earned an M.Phil. in international relations from the University of Cambridge, where I was a Gates Scholar, and also a master's degree in information management from the University of California, Berkeley, where I studied technology and innovation. Before Berkeley, I worked in international development for World Learning in Washington, D.C., with field assignments in Vietnam and the Balkans (the STAR network) focusing on women's entrepreneurial development. I earned my bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 2003, with a major in philosophy and a minor in computer science. My childhood was split between Japan and the United States: the first nine years of my life were spent in Japan, where I was born, and the next nine years in Silver Spring, MD.

My work has been widely cited in venues ranging from Science and the New Yorker to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Arab Weekly, Times Higher Education, and the Huffington Post.