Welcome!

I am a political scientist whose research focuses on political economy and political methodology, with a particular emphasis on how institutions shape elite and mass political behavior across regime types, from consolidated democracies to entrenched dictatorships. I examine these dynamics using both cross-national data and fine-grained evidence from Eastern Europe.

My work has been published in leading academic and journalistic outlets. In a solo-authored article in Comparative Political Studies, I develop a novel measure of legislative power-sharing and show that it challenges conventional wisdom about the stabilizing role of institutions in authoritarian regimes. If anything, legislative power-sharing appears to be associated with greater, not less, vulnerability to being removed from office by coups and revolts. 

In my public-facing scholarship, I examine Russian public opinion toward the war in Ukraine, arguing that many Russians support or tolerate the war less out of fervent nationalism than from a sense of political powerlessness and psychological adaptation to a conflict they perceive as beyond their control.

I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in April 2026. I also hold an M.A. in Political Science from UNC and an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Indiana University Bloomington.