I am the Research Manager at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. I research civil conflict, the organizational development of insurgent groups, and community politics in weak states.

At Kroc, I lead a project on digital peacebuilding and contribute to programs that tracks threats against local policymakers in the United States and that survey women peacebuilders around the world on their security and work contexts.

My dissertation considers the organizational development of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. In particular, it demonstrates that Maoist rebels relied heavily on the support of forestry conservation groups to build their own capacity. Forestry groups, grassroots civilian collectives that created and enforced rules about land use and animal husbandry, helped mobilize Maoist allied civilians in the villages where they operated. Maoists were more likely to recruit, build public services, and assassinate rival political operatives in villages with forestry groups.

I also have ongoing projects in the Kenya/Somalia border region, and you can read my work on South Africa in World Development, or in the research tab of this site.

I teach introductory courses in Comparative Politics and International Relations, and upper division courses in civil conflict, the trafficking/insurgency nexus, and local political development with regional foci on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.