Research Profile

I am a scholar of African Democracy and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University (MSU).  I am also a core faculty member at MSU's African Studies Center. In my work, I focus particularly on the challenges facing newly democratized countries in arranging free, fair, and credible elections. 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. 

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 University of Missouri, the London School of Economics (LSE), University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). I have taught several courses on comparative politics, democratization theories, methods, African Politics, and European Politics at MSU, University of Missouri, LSE, UT-Austin, and Lund University. 

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 Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy (DIPD), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (UK) on matters related to party development and campaign finance. I have also been engaged in training of international election monitors.