I am a political scientist focused on the political economy of global policy, particularly threats to global democracy and democratic governance and accountability. I am interested in two related but distinct themes of research: one considers how accountability mechanisms can be perverted or disrupted when institutions are weak or states are developing; and the other considers the methods and data used to study global democracy, governance, and accountability. To conduct this research, I partner with government institutions, international organizations, and policymakers, as well as other academics. Methodologically, I utilize various tools in my work, including interviews, focus group discussions, text analysis, observational data, and experiments (field, lab-in-the-field, conjoint, and behavioral experiments). 

I obtained my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2014. For the 2014-2015 academic year, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. In 2015, I joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where I was an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy, as well as the Peter Thacher Grauer Scholar in Honors. Currently, I am an Associate Professor of Global Policy at Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. I am also Project Manager of Experiments for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project and a founding Principal Investigator of the Digital Society Project, both cross-national data projects providing publicly available political data. 

For the 2023-2024, 2024-2025, and 2025-2026 academic years, I am on loan from UMN as a Senior Evaluator at the Office of Evaluation Sciences in the General Services Administration of the U.S. Federal Government.