Welcome! I am a PhD Candidate and Presidential Fellow in the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University, with affiliations at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and the Translational Data Analytics Institute. My research sits at the intersection of politics, culture, and group dynamics, with particular attention to political mobilization, public discourse, and conflict processes. I also have a strong methodological interest in computational and mixed-methods approaches that connect macro-level patterns to the social processes that produce them.

Most of my research examines the causes and consequences of social division; that is, extremism, exclusion, and targeted violence. In my dissertation, I turn to the underlying concept of division itself, and dissect what is arguably the most consequential distinction in social and political life: the symbolic boundary between "us" and "them." Drawing on theory and methods from sociology, political science, communication, criminology, and computational social science, I leverage network analysis techniques, natural language processing, and experimental designs to study how division is structured, reproduced, and—at times—contested. 

My research has appeared or is forthcoming in journals from across the social sciences, including Social Problems, Criminology, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Legislative Studies, Politics, Groups & Identities, and Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism & Political Aggression. I also write for public audiences, with contributions to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology’s Insight Series and the European Consortium for Political Research’s The Loop, among others. 

For examples of ongoing projects, data, and replication code, please see my Projects page and GitHub. Alternatively, check out some of my recent appearances in broadcast and other media, alongside coverage of my work. I also make music, some of which you can find here, alongside a music video.