I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCLA. Previously, I was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia with EGAP – Evidence in Governance and Politics. I hold a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton.

My book project asks why groups living near valuable assets like oil fields are often able to force the state to make major policy concessions. It is based on 9 months of fieldwork in Nigeria, and is supported by an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant and the International Growth Centre.

I also study why civilians support armed groups through survey research in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and I’ve developed new methods for sensitive survey questions.

My work appears in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Political Analysis, and won the 2013 Pi Sigma Alpha Award for best paper from the Midwest Political Science Association.