Research

I study the domestic consequences of unarmed international interventions in fragile states, examining whether and how outside actors can promote peace and economic development in conflict-prone settings. Fragile states often lack the capacity to collect data themselves and are too dangerous for third parties to collect data consistently. This raises challenges for quantitative inquiry. My research brings modern statistical and machine learning tools to these settings, allowing me and other scholars to measure concepts and test theories previously beyond empirical reach. My methods work has been published in Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, a leading machine learning and statistics venue, and my solo-authored paper on UN peacebuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa has been invited to revise and resubmit at the Journal of Peace Research.

Publications

A Multi-Task Gaussian Process Model for Inferring Time-Varying Treatment Effects in Panel Data (with Yehu Chen, Jacob Montgomery, and Roman Garnett) Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 2023.

Working Papers

Building State Capacity Locally: International Interventions, Delegation, and Local Governance in Fragile States (Job Market Paper) Selected presentations: the 2026 Society for Political Methodology Annual Meeting; the 2024 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting; and the 2024 International Studies Association Annual Convention.

A Gaussian Process Framework for Structured, Flexible, and Interpretable Machine-Learning Models (with Yehu Chen, Jacob Montgomery, and Roman Garnett) Presented at the 2024 Society for Political Methodology Annual Meeting; and the 2023 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting.

Why not both? Combining human and LLM labels in event data Presented at the 2025 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting; and the 2025 Society for Political Methodology Annual Meeting.

Beyond Peacekeeping: The United Nations Development Programme, Peacebuilding, and Violence Mitigation (Awarded Best Poster from APSA at the 2023 conference; Revise and Resubmit) Selected presentations: the 2023 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting; and the 2023 Society for Political Methodology Annual Meeting.

Border Fortification and Trust in Political Institutions (with David Carter, Beth Simmons, and Michael Kenwick) (Under review) Selected presentations: the 2026 European Political Science Society Conference; and the 2024 International Studies Association Annual Convention.

Violence Dynamics in Israel-Palestine: Introducing the Palestinian-Israeli Interactions & Microhostilities (PA'ILIM) Dataset (with Carly N. Wayne and Abbie Eastman) (Under review)

Works in Progress

• Hierarchical Partial Pooling and Difference-in-Differences (for the 2026 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting)
• United Nations Development Programme Complete Project Dataset
• Lights Out: The USAID Shutdown as a Natural Experiment in Nighttime Light Validity