Welcome to my website! I am an academic researcher and applied political analyst of authoritarian politics, elite strategic decision-making, political-military affairs, and ideological illiberalism in post-Soviet Eurasia, Europe, and elsewhere. I hold a Ph.D in Political Science from George Washington University, and currently work as a Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses in their dedicated Russia Studies Program. I teach as a Professorial Lecturer in Political Science at George Washington University as well. I also hold a position as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program, which is part of the Elliott School of International Affairs.

My Ph.D dissertation focused on parliamentary and conciliar bodies under electoral authoritarian rule, studying the place of assembly-style institutions in longstanding, non-democratic political orders. Alongside coauthors, a new book titled Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism on authoritarian institutional autonomy will be published by the University of Michigan Press in Summer 2024. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in the Russian Federation,  Ukraine, and Germany. My academic work has been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals such as Political Studies Review, The Journal of International Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, The Journal of Illiberalism Studies, The International Journal of Constitutional Law, and Social Media + Society, alongside analytic and policy-oriented publications in outlets such as American Purpose, American Affairs, War on the Rocks, RIDDLE Russia, The National Interest, Russia Matters, The University Bookman, Church-Life Journal, Russland-Analysen, Russian Analytical Digest, and Baltic Worlds.

Previously, I have been a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Sociology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Munich, Germany (2018), a Visiting Scholar at the Center for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin, Germany (2017), and a Visiting Researcher at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russian Federation (2016-2017). In 2015-2016, I was Doctoral Student Fellow at the Institute for European, Russia and Eurasian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, DC. I have been a Bradley Foundation Fellow, and am an awardee of the Institute for Humane Studies' Humane Studies Fellowship, the ASEEES Dissertation Research Grant, the 'Trajectories of Change' Fieldwork Grant from the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, and the Hoffman Dissertation Fellowship for dissertation fieldwork.

You may subscribe to my newsletter on authoritarianism, Political Order(s), here.