About

I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a member of the Local Politics Lab at the Bloomberg Center for Cities. I specialize in political behavior, public opinion, local politics, and the criminal justice system.

I am primarily interested in why the quality of public goods that citizens receive, and the burdens they face in their interactions with government, vary profoundly across communities. My research examines how political incentives and institutions produce these inequalities and how, in turn, they shape whose interests are represented.

My current work investigates how place-based differences in crime, policing, and punishment affect political behavior; how voters navigate low-information local elections; and how bureaucrats, institutional rules, and organized interests shape the capacity, responsiveness, and policy outputs of local governments. My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and the Center for Public Leadership, and has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Politics and Science Advances.

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University and my B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Colorado, Boulder.