About Me

I received my PhD in Politics from Princeton University in August 2019. Prior to coming to Princeton, I earned an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University and worked for a small, London-based NGO. I completed my undergraduate education at the University of California, Irvine with degrees in journalism and political science. My dissertation committee members were Helen Milner, Kosuke Imai, Lucy Martin, and Leonard Wantchekon. 

In 2022, after several years of increasingly severe symptoms, a failed surgery and over a year on medical leave, I was diagnosed with two rare but commonly co-occurring genetic disorders caused by mutations in the KIT and Kallikrein gene families, which in turn left me with a form of mastocytosis, an advanced peripheral neuropathy, and a related disorder of the autonomic nervous system. 

The median time to diagnosis for these diseases is 8 years from the onset of major symptoms, a figure I was able to match only because of my proximity to talented clinical researchers. So if you or someone you know is currently struggling to receive a diagnosis or having difficulties reconciling professional demands with their declining health, please reach out, I am always happy to share my experiences and lessons learned. For those who don’t feel comfortable revealing personal information, I maintain a by-invitation blog that touches on navigating the American healthcare system, finding the right doctors, and dealing with the personal and professional consequences of chronic pain and illness.

Severe chronic illnesses — degenerative, multi-system, and hard to diagnose — are particularly challenging to deal with as a graduate student and early career scholar, and many frontline treatments, especially for chronic pain, also have significant cognitive side effects that can further impair the ability to perform the core tasks of academic work. The demands of teaching in particular can prove very daunting, but for those wishing to stay in academia there are other research-focused career paths that are often more compatible with long-term, permanent disability. If you are dealing with a complex chronic illness and considering alternative, non-tenure career paths as a way to stay in academia, I've benefited from a lot of excellent advice that I am happy to pass on.