I am the inaugural Democracy Fellow in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University. In 2009-2010 I was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Italy. I received my Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2010. My dissertation, entitled The Satisfied Citizen: Participation, Influence, and Public Perceptions of Democratic Performance, won the American Political Science Association’s 2011 Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation Award in European Politics as well as the 2011 Best Dissertation Award in Urban Politics.

My research and teaching interests lie in the area of comparative and European politics with a focus on public opinion, political participation, and political institutions. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, my work addresses two closely-related research questions. First, how do ordinary people in contemporary democratic settings understand and practice citizenship? Second, how does the design and reform of democratic political institutions impact how citizens think and act politically? In answering these questions, my work examines not only the direct impact of different national and subnational, politico-institutional structures on citizen attitudes and behavior, but also the extent to which individual-level and macro-level, socio-economic and political variables interact to affect citizen attitudes and behavior.