I am a PhD candidate in comparative politics at the Columbia University Department of Political Science. My dissertation project examines how citizens react to statebuilding and when they choose cooperate with the state. Citizens balance the boons (access to services, property rights protections) and risks (expropriation, persecution) of making themselves "legible". I study this in the contexts of postcolonial Tunisia and Cote d'Ivoire, explaining temporal, spatial, and social trends in property and vital records registration.

Additional substantive interests include the historical political economy of statebuilding, the politics of decolonization, and political participation. Methodologically, I use computational text analysis and geospatial tools to analyze novel sources of administrative data. Both statistical causal inference techniques and qualitative process-tracing help to adjudicate causal mechanisms. I am also interested in experimental interventions with treatment noncompliance.

I am currently on the job market in anticipation of defending my dissertation in May 2026.

Please send me an email if you may be interested in collaborating on projects related to state-citizen relations, land politics, or historical political economy