curriculum vitae (.pdf)
About Me
I was born in Bogotá, Colombia, where I am told that I spent two happy years before my family settled in the New York City area where I grew up in the village of Bronxville. I received a B.A. from Yale University, where I majored in Philosophy and dabbled in Architecture and Latin American History. After Yale, I moved to Barcelona, Spain and played baseball for two seasons for the Hercules de L'Hospitalet club of the Spanish Baseball League. I then moved to Austin, TX to study Latin American Politics at the University of Texas. After completing an M.A. at Texas, I entered the Ph.D. program in Political Science at The University of California, Berkeley. There I studied comparative politics, methodology, and political behavior and wrote a doctoral dissertation on the process of diffusion in transitions to and from democracy -- a study based, in part, on field work in Brazil. After filing my dissertation in 2003, I took a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois and spent five happy years in the prairie before re-succumbing to the charms of Austin and the University of Texas, where I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Government. I live in Austin with my wife, Jules, and three young sons who have seemingly boundless energy. |