I am an Associate Professor of international relations and methodology in the Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, where I was an Assistant Professor between 2018 and 2013 and won the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2022). I completed my PhD at the University of Minnesota, where I also obtained a MSc in Applied Economics. Within international relations, my research has involved innovative approaches to studying the causes of civil conflict, with an emphasis on how environmental pressures shape patterns of political violence. My methodological interests include limited dependent variable models, econometric methods, mixed and combined methods approaches, and event data. My research attracted the support of the National Science Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Dickey Center at Dartmouth College, and the United States Institute of Peace, among others. I am also the inaugural recipient of the International Studies Association – Peace Studies Section’s Emerging Scholar Award (2023).
My work has appeared or is forthcoming in multiple academic journals, including Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution and American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and has been mentioned in policy outlets such as Foreign Policy, The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), and NPR. My book, The Politics of Mass Killing in Autocratic Regimes (coauthored with Bumba Mukherjee), which was published in June 2018, explains when and where food shortages can lead to mass killing within nondemoratic states. I have consulted on these issues for various official and nongovernmental organizations, including, among others, the United Nations (Office of Internal Oversight Services and International Organization on Migration), Strategy for Humanity, and the Stimson Center.
This website contains information about my research and teaching. My Google Scholar profile can be found here. My linkedin profile can be accessed here. For more information about my research see here and here.
The most current version of my CV can be found here.
Last updated: May 8, 2023.