I am a Senior Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Political Science and DevLab@Penn. I study political economy in developing countries, with a specific interest in how non-profit organizations shape, and are shaped by, politics and governance. In my research, I aspire to generate insights that can help donors and civil society strengthen democratic institutions and weaken autocratic rule in developing countries. To investigate these topics, my research uses spatial analysis, machine learning techniques, and causal inference tools including field and survey experiments.
My research has been published in World Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, and International Studies Quarterly, and I have produced commissioned policy reports for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Center for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance, the Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub, and the Missions to Ethiopia and Cambodia. My work has received support from the Open Society Foundations, the National Science Foundation, USAID, an anonymous philanthropic foundation, and the American Political Science Association.
I completed my PhD in comparative politics and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. From 2019 – 2022, I was a Postdoc and then Senior Research Associate at Duke University.
