I am an Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary and an affiliated researcher at the University of Bergen. I earned my PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and my BA in Economics from Vassar College. From 2018-2019, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan. 

​My research focuses on the role that law and courts play in strategies of autocratic survival. My book project examines when and why autocrats use courts to repress and the ramifications of such strategies on the development of rule of law and judicial power over time. Drawing on cases from sub-Saharan Africa, I utilize a mixed-methods approach that combines statistical modeling, structured case studies, and computational text analysis. 

​My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been published in World Politics.
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