Welcome! I am an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. I direct a lab on the Political Economy of Agriculture and Rural Societies (PEARS) and am a faculty affiliate at IGCC and CAPE. I received my PhD in political science from Harvard University and have been a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. 

My research is in comparative politics, political economy, and political-economic history/development. I am an expert on India, but I also work comparatively.  My research has mostly followed three streams: (i) the political impact of new technologies; (ii) the historical origins of democracy; and (iii) the drivers of weak bureaucratic capacity in developing countries. I am also interested in applications of "AI" (deep learning) in the social sciences.