Research Profile

I am a scholar of African Democracy and currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University (MSU).  I am also a core faculty member at MSU's African Studies Center. I will join University of Texas- Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs as a Professor in 2026.

In my work, I focus particularly on the challenges facing newly democratized countries in arranging free, fair, and credible elections that translate into effective political representation. I tackle central political issues in African democracies, including party system development, intra-party democracy, election violence, campaign financing, electoral system reform, electoral fraud, lack of electoral competitiveness, unequal political representation, and judicial electoral intervention. In further extensions of my work, I theorize the role that elections play in global processes of democratization and authoritarian stability and how Western democracies engage in democracy and human rights promotion in Africa and other parts of the developing world. My latest book, Controlling Territory, Controlling Voters: The Electoral Geography of African Campaign Violence, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. 

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Lund University (Sweden) in 2012. Before taking up my current position at MSU, I held research and teaching positions at the University of Missouri, the London School of Economics (LSE), and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). I have been a residential visiting scholar at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Aarhus University (Denmark), University College London (UK), University of Cape Town (South Africa), and the London School of Economics (UK). I serve on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Political Science, Democratization, and the Journal of African Elections. 

In my role as a teacher, I have taught extensively at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. My teaching has focused on a broad set of topics, including comparative politics, democratization theories, methods, African Politics, and European Politics. I have also organized study abroad programs in the UK and Zambia. I am a deeply committed PhD mentor and have served on numerous dissertation committees at MSU and the University of Missouri. 

Apart from my academic work, I have served as a chief election consultant in Zambia for the Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP) and have been engaged in several expert assignments writing on the politics of Malawi on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Cooperation and Development (BMZ). I serve on the international advisory board of the Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) in Malawi and have been an advisor and consultant for the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (UK), and the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy (DIPD) on matters related to women's political representation, party development, and campaign finance. I have also been engaged in the training of Swedish European Union (EU) election monitors.