About

Download my CV here.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and the Department of Political Science (by courtesy) at UCLA.

I am also a Research Affiliate with the Future of Democracy Initiative at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and a Faculty Affiliate at the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies.

My research interests include political communication, parties, behavior, European politics, comparative democratic institutions, and research methodology. My book examines how parties’ organizations affect party membership, representation, and electoral success. I am also working on several projects that examine the institutions that regulate party diversity, the normative implications of party organizations for representation, social influence on voting, and the causes and consequences of online hate speech. The methods I employ include formal theory, experiments, statistics, and interviews.

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Before moving to UCLA, I was Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.

I currently run the UCLA Political Party Organizations Lab, in which undergraduate researchers and I collect and code constitutions and rules from political parties around the world. At UCLA, I teach courses on political communication, media and politics, and research methodology.

I am part of the Communication and Politics Group at UCLA. Please join us!

I have appeared in the media explaining how parliamentary systems work, discussing the presidential debates (here and here), and commenting on leadership selection rules in the U.K., candidate selection rules in the U.S., and the 2013 Australian parliamentary election.