I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rhode Island College and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where I was previously a postdoctoral
research fellow (2018-2019).
I specialize in comparative politics of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. My research interests include electoral institution & manipulation, civil society, and gender politics in authoritarian regimes. In my book project, I investigate why some autocrats use extensive electoral fraud whereas others do not. I argue that strong social cohesion can reduce fraud by facilitating the spread of information regarding rigged elections. In turn, informed citizens are more likely to solve collective action problems and mobilize themselves against the regime. I test my argument using cross-national and subnational empirical data accompanied by qualitative analyses of Algeria, Kuwait, and Morocco. I also have ongoing projects on repression in autocracies, gender quotas in North Africa, public opinion in the Gulf, and Yemeni refugees in South Korea.
My research has been funded by the Project on Middle East Political Science, UCLA's International Institute, Rice University's Baker Institute Center for the Middle East, and the Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs.
I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA in 2018 and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics, with a minor in Arabic from Washington University in St. Louis. I also spent a semester abroad at the American University in Cairo.