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 civic leadership, 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. My peer-reviewed research appears in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and Governance. 

 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. 

In 2018 I was honored to receive the Emerging Scholar Award from the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association. 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.