I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
My research is mostly in the area of political economy, though I tend to gravitate toward questions across subfields that focus on understanding phenomena that disproportionately harm specific groups of people (so, e.g., economic globalization, research funding, citation patterns), and I'm especially interested in anything that speaks to people's livelihoods (how they get money, or don't, and the consequences of that). I teach research methods and international political economy (IPE) at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I received the UMN College of Liberal Arts' Motley Exemplary Teaching Award in 2022 largely in recognition of my methods teaching. Most of my research focuses on business and politics, with a particular focus on the role of public opinion. Many of my articles try to understand the non-material determinants of attitudes about economic globalization. My first book, The Cost of Doing Politics (Cambridge University Press), asks how public opinion shapes corporate influence tactics. I am currently working on two ongoing longer-format projects (books? maybe!), one about small business ownership and local civic/political participation (with Andrew Kerner) and one about the political causes and consequences of participation in multilevel marketing (MLMs) schemes (with Ellen Key). My second book, R for Political Science Research: An Introduction for Absolute Beginners (Springer, forthcoming), is targeted specifically at students with little or no background in computers or programming, and who may find themselves frightened, angry, or otherwise unexcited about learning R. It assumes no background knowledge at all, covers both base and tidy, and aims to give readers a solid foundation in the basics such that they can move on to more advanced books and topics. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Emory University in 2016 under the excellent mentoring of Jennifer Gandhi, and I received my B.S. from the University of Michigan in 2010. I was born and raised in Royal Oak, Michigan. |