This photo was taken outside Saddam Hussien's Secret Policy Head-Quarters (The Mukhabarat) in Bagdad, Iraq.
The history of Iraqi Intelligence and US-Iraq diplomacy provide important lessons for my research: (1) The Mukhabarat show exactly what leaders will do to understand their enemies. (2) The Iraq wars remind us of the consequences of ineffective communication: Had Saddam been able to communicate his interests effectively, the world may be a different place.
Welcome
Welcome to my website.
I am the Chauncey post-doctoral fellow at Yale University (2018-2020) and hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from George Washington University (2018).
In my dissertation, I developed a new technique to integrate the historical and cultural determinants of a state’s foreign policy into formal models of great power politics. Using this technique, I produce unique predictions about conflict during crisis bargaining (solo article in Journal of Politics), power transitions (dissertation and book manuscript), and military interventions (Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution). In empirical work, I show that conflict in these different settings is explained by how states exploit historical information to understand their rival’s motives using survey experiments with real-world intelligence analysts and archival research. Using quantitative tests, I show my motives-based theories explain variance in great power competition that theories of power and bargaining fail to capture.
My research has interested policy-makers in Washington DC because it provides novel insights about Sino-American relations, and the use of digital technology in intelligence analysis.
Before starting my Ph.D., I worked as a foreign policy consultant in Iraq, Australia, Jordan, and the US.