I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. From 2020 to 2023 I was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Previously, I was Assistant Professor of Teaching and Associate Director of the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown University.

My research is concerned with questions of institutional development and regime outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. I have researched electoral authoritarianism, authoritarian parties, candidate selection and legislative development, and the provision of social welfare in developing countries. My work draws on diverse methods but is rooted in the qualitative case-study tradition. I have conducted fieldwork in Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi, and Senegal.

My current book-length project is titled Discovering Welfare: The Politics of Social Protection in Africa. The project is a cross-national examination of the intersection of democratic politics, historical legacies, and the expansion of social welfare programs such as non-contributory pensions, social health insurance, and cash transfers. The project combines novel cross-national time-series data and in-depth case studies to provide a comprehensive, yet tentative, analysis of the green shoots of new social welfare initiatives. The project is supported by the Andrew Carnegie Fellows program and was conducted in partnership with CDD-Ghana, the West African Research Council, and Chancelor College-University of Malawi.

My previous book How Autocrats Compete: Parties, Patrons, and Unfair Elections in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2019) investigates the phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism in Africa. I trace differences in competitive strategies and the longer-term stability of authoritarianism to variation in how ruling parties evolved and how aid-dependent countries navigate their international relations and cultivate the support of key patrons.