Welcome! I'm a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

My research is in the field of Comparative Politics with an emphasis on leadership, gender and politics, comparative political institutions, and political behavior. I employ both quantitative and qualitative research approaches to examine how institutions shape elite and mass political behavior.

I have won over $600,000 in grants and fellowships to support my research. I am author of Gendering Legislative Behavior (2016, Cambridge University Press), Working Class Inclusion (2023, Cambridge University Press), The Representational Consequences of Electronic Voting Reform (2023, Cambridge Elements) and Women, Politics, and Power (2020, Rowman and Littlefield). I edited the Handbook on Gender and Corruption in Democracies. My other peer-reviewed research appears in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Research Quarterly, Governance, Politics & Gender, and Politics, Groups, and Identities. 

With Diana Z. O'Brien I edit the Elements in Gender & Politics series for Cambridge University Press. I am an editor at the British Journal of Political Science, former editor at Legislative Studies Quarterly, and former associate editor at Research and Politics. With Amanda Clayton and Dawn Teele, I am founder and director of The Empirical Study of Gender Research Network (EGEN).

In 2018 I was honored to receive the Emerging Scholar Award from the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association. In 2017 I was honored with the Early Career Award from the Midwest Women's Caucus for Political Science. In 2013 I was a Research Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. I spent Spring 2019 at Tulane University as the Greenleaf Scholar-In-Residence in the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. In 2017 my first book, was awarded the Alan Rosenthal Prize by the American Political Science Association Legislative Studies Section. In 2017 I won the Sophonisba Breckinridge Award from the Midwest Political Science Association. I was also awarded the best article published in Political Research Quarterly in 2017 and the Marian Irish Award in 2017 from the Southern Political Science Association. My monograph, Working Class Inclusion, was awarded the Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize for the best book in legislative studies and Co-Winner of the Best Book on Class and Inequality in 2024.