I am a Continued Education and Policy Dialogue Manager at the ETH Zurich's Einstein School of Public Policy. Before my current role, I was Professor of Comparative Politics at Durham University's School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) and a member of the Centre of Institutions and Political Behaviour (CIPB). During this time, I also served as SGIA's Deputy Head of School and Director of Education (2020 and 2022-2025), Head of Ethics and Risk (2017-2020), and Director of the CIPB and Deputy Director of Research (2021-2022). I have also been the Principal Investigator (PI) on the ESRC/AHRC-funded project "Causes and Consequences of Electoral Violence: Evidence from England and Wales, 1832-1914", which created the first systematic dataset on 19th-century election violence (see digital map).
I hold a lic. phil. I degree in Political Science from the University of Zurich (2005), an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Rochester (2009), and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Rochester (2014). Before joining Durham, I was a Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (2013-14) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) Project at Princeton University (2012-14). Between 2016 and 2019, I was also a part-time Lecturer at ETH Zurich's Institute for Science, Technology, and Policy.
My research is in Comparative Political Economy, specifically on the relationship between democratic institutions, economic development, and political violence. For a full list of my publications, go to the Publications page on this website or visit my Google Scholar profile.
Download a copy of my full academic CV here.