Welcome! I am a Ford Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2023-2024, I am on leave as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. I received my PhD in Government from Harvard University in May 2017.
My research focuses on comparative politics and historical political economy. My scholarship is organized around two distinct research agendas: (1) the role of identity in state-building and economic development and (2) the long-term effects of violence on political identities and behavior. I ask whether group identities shape preferences for formal and informal governance institutions; how cultural diversity affects economic performance; and what mechanisms connect violence in the distant past to contemporary political outcomes. I draw on extensive archival and field research and employ quantitative analysis of observational and experimental data as well as narrative evidence. My regional focus is on Europe and Eurasia.
My book project, Uprooted: How post-WWII Population Transfers Remade Europe, examines the long-run effects of forced migration in the aftermath of World War II in Poland and West Germany, synthesizing several decades of micro-level data collected during a year of fieldwork, funded by the Social Science Research Council and Center for European Studies. The book is based on my PhD dissertation, awarded the 2018 Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation prize by the APSA European Politics and Society Section as well as the Best Dissertation Prize by the APSA Migration & Citizenship Section.
My work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science , World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of International Relations, and Nationalities Papers.
In 2021, I was awarded Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award, presented annually by Council of European Studies at Columbia University to a young scholar who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the interdisciplinary study of Europe.
I am on the editorial board and regular contributor to Broadstreet Blog, dedicated to interdisciplinary research of historical political economy. I am also on the editorial board of the Journal of Historical Political Economy (JHPE). I have contributed articles to Foreign Affairs, Monkey Cage at the Washington Post, National Interest, Transitions Online, Arms Control Today, Belarus Digest, and other media.