Welcome

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government, Public Service, and International Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. My research and teaching interests include ethnic politics in comparative contexts, intergroup contact and prejudice reduction, Southeast Asian politics, and migration politics.

I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. My dissertation, titled “The Role of Outgroup Trust on Voting Behavior in Ethnically Salient Contexts” argues that the detrimental effect of ethnic voting on democratic consolidation is less pronounced in contexts where individuals extend trust beyond their own ethnic groups (i.e., display high outgroup trust). I test my theory using comparative survey experimental data from the US and Myanmar populations, and existing survey data on sub-Saharan Africa, and find that outgroup trust is a strong predictor of cross-ethnic voting across these contexts.

My current research projects test methods for improving relations across ethnic groups using imagined intergroup contact and AI-mediated contact, drawing on original survey experiment data in contexts where ethnicity is a salient political identity. I am also working on a project examining the relationship between ethnic politics and civic knowledge across comparative contexts using secondary survey data.

At my current institution, I teach a mix of lower- and upper-level Comparative Politics courses, including Introduction to Comparative Politics, Comparative Politics in Developing Nations, Government and Politics in Southeast Asia, and International Migration Laws & Policies. I have also taught US Government & Politics to students across various majors at the university.