Biography

I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and will defend my dissertation in July 2011. My dissertation is titled ‘Political Participation is More than Just Resources: A New Approach to the Study of Civic Engagement’ and is written under the supervision of Professors Michael Alvarez, Roderick Kiewiet, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal.
My primary research interests lie in the fields of political behaviour and research methods. My dissertation develops a new statistical procedure for modelling civic engagement, and applies this method to survey data collected in the United States during different electoral periods. I have also studied voter choice under a variety of electoral systems; the impact of political attitudes (such as approval of emergency economic policies) and acquisition of citizenship on civic engagement; the determinants of public attitudes toward election reform; and have worked on the development and application of election forensic indicators. Some of my research is forthcoming in Political Research Quarterly and Election Law Journal, and other manuscripts are currently under review.
I have been a teaching assistant and given invited lectures for political science courses, including Introduction to Political Science (an applied game theory course), American Electoral Behaviour and Party Strategy, and Comparative Politics, and presented my research at multiple political science conferences. Also, I have served as Graduate Editorial Assistant for Political Analysis since January 2010.