I am Associate Professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. My current research centers on three projects that each explore theoretical and practical dimensions of social science methodology.
The first project examines how politics shape ethnographic practice. Based on interviews with ethnographers who have conducted long-term fieldwork in Turkey over the past 40 years, this research explores how political and social changes have shaped the dynamics of conducting ethnography in Turkey, and the consequences for knowledge production in and about this country. A first article from this project is forthcoming at Sociological Methods & Research.
A second project explores how methodology shapes the ways that legitimacy is theorized in the social sciences. Synthesizing across scholarship in the social sciences, I have developed a dyadic framework for operationalizing and measuring legitimacy, which I contend stands to remedy persistent gaps between theory and analysis in research on legitimacy. I introduce this relational approach in a recent article published in the American Sociological Review. This work builds on my earlier research on legitimacy in contentious politics, which has appeared in a variety of outlets including Journal of Politics, Social Forces, Social Problems, and Sociological Science, among others.
Third, I recently completed a book manuscript, co-authored with Ronald Breiger and David Melamed, that advances a case-oriented approach to regression analysis. This book is under contract with Cambridge University Press and builds on research published in outlets including Lecture Notes in Computer Science, PLOS One, Sociological Methods & Research, and Social Networks.
Substantively, my research is grounded the study of politics, with a particular focus on contentious politics. In this context, my research has explored issues related to armed conflict, revolution, social movements, and terrorism.
Links to full text versions of all of my articles can be found under Publications, and my CV is available here