Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome!  I’m currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin- Madison and an Associate Fellow (Non-Resident) at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  I’m also a faculty fellow with the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS).  I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin (Hook ‘Em!), and from 2015 to 2019 I was on the faculty at the University of Louisville.  You can download my current C.V. here.

I’m a comparativist by training with a regional specialization in the Middle East, but I have also begun to develop an interest in Southeast Asia.  Substantively, I am interested in religion and politics, non-democratic regimes and oppositions, and social service provision.  My first book, Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage, (Cornell University Press, 2019) was about non-state social service provision in authoritarian regimes with a particular emphasis on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The book was fortunate enough to win the “Best Book by a First-Time Author” Award from the APSA organized section on Middle East- North Africa politics (Section 49), and you can read reviews of it in Perspectives on Politics, Mediterranean Politics, and Political Science Quarterly.

I have two current book projects.  One examines the factors behind the success and failure of social movements, with an empirical focus on interwar Egypt, while the second considers how religious institutions can protect vulnerable populations, based on the contemporary Philippines.  To read more about these, as well as my other research projects, please go here.