I currently volunteer as a Chief Data Scientist for the CoronaNet Research Project. I am also a Havighurst Fellow at Miami University’s Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies and the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies. I received my Ph.D. from Indiana University’s Department of Political Science.
My research explores the effect of corruption on mass and elite political behavior in authoritarian contexts. My dissertation, The Logic of Anti-Corruption Campaigns, asks why authoritarian countries, where corruption is central to regime stability, use anti-corruption campaigns. In it, I use original data that differentiates among anti-corruption tools and analytic narratives that portray anti-corruption campaigns in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia to demonstrate the different ways that autocrats use anti-corruption campaigns for regime maintenance.
I have also been affiliated with the Russian Studies Workshop at Indiana University, the Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center, the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and the Ostrom Workop. I received bachelor’s degrees in Diplomacy & Global Politics and in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Miami University.