Research

The core of my research aims to understand foreign aid from the perspective of aid recipients. By better understanding aid recipients' preferences over and strategic engagement with aid, I hope to draw lessons for how to improve project efficacy and development outcomes.

My dissertation project, The Political Economy of Foreign Aid from the Recipient Perspective: Evidence from Cambodia, provides a unique perspective, by looking at how recipient-side bureaucrats compete over foreign aid dollars. Centered on elite interview evidence gathered during three field trips to Cambodia, my dissertation shows that aid-implementing bureaucrats compete with one another for the opportunity to implement aid projects, seeking additional compensation and opportunities for career advancement. This intra-recipient competition compliments existing literature on fragmentation and provides a novel mechanism to explain ineffective aid implementation.

Throughout my research, I have always made it a primary goal to share research with local academics and policymakers. I have helped participate in and organize workshops at the Royal University of Phnom Penh and the Cambodian Development Resource Institute. I have and continue to co-author with Cambodian scholars, and firmly believe that researchers have a duty to give back to the places where we conduct our research.

My research has received grant and fellowship funding from a variety of American and Cambodian sources, including funding for archival research at presidential libraries, and a semester-long fellowship at the Center for Khmer Studies, Cambodia's CAORC affiliate center.