I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Before coming to UT Dallas, I was the Director of Applied Research for The Horizons Project, where I led research on countering democratic backsliding. I have also worked as the senior researcher at the US Institute of Peace, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, an external associate at the Peace Research Institution of Oslo (PRIO), and a research fellow at the Sie Cheou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy, where I supervised data collection for the Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD) and the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) 3.0 data projects.

My research on civil resistance, democratization, and peacebuilding has been widely published by major university presses and leading journals including Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Conflict Management and Peace Science. My first book From Dissent to Democracy: The Promise and Peril of Civil Resistance Transitions, was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press.

I received my PhD in International Relations from the University of Denver in 2018. I was a 2012 recipient of the Korbel School’s Sie Fellowship and a 2016 recipient of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s PhD fellowship. I currently live in Plano, Texas. In my free time, I enjoy running, mountain climbing, and watching great films.