I am an empirical political scientist studying questions of violent conflict, democratic participation and peacebuilding. I am a Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies and contributor at the new Democracy Action Lab. I earned my PhD in Political Science from New York University’s Department of Politics.

My first major line of work has been investigating efforts to employ democracy as a mechanism for resolving violent conflict. This work investigates how negotiated solutions shape the democratic mobilization of ex-combatants, evaluates the consequences of strategies to promote former rebels’ democratic engagement and examines the implications of their participation for democracy in Colombia. My evidence-base for this work spans quantitative and qualitative sources including novel field experiments, surveys, and interviews (with former combatants and commanders, grassroots militants and peace agreement negotiators) as well as electoral data and original cross-national data on global patterns of rebel democratic inclusion. My more recent research stream examines question of violence and democratic mobilization in Venezuela and Mexico. This work has been supported by the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Institute for Humane Studies, the American Political Science Association Centennial Center, the NYU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and is published in the Journal of Politics.

I have deeply enjoyed teaching throughout my career and am currently co-director of the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program at Stanford. I have taught courses on International Relations, Comparative Politics, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency and Political Economy of Development in Latin America and am honored to have received the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award (NYU). 

I also have experience outside the university, including as an electoral observer for the Organization of America States, for the United Nations University Center for Policy Research working on ex-combatant reintegration into civilian life, the Inter-American Development Bank on the evolution of Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, US-based think tanks on US foreign policy towards Latin America, and Caracas-based NGOs on violent crime and humanitarian aid. 

See my most recent CV here.