Welcome! 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 also teach as a Professorial Lecturer in Political Science (Adjunct Professor) at George Washington University. I hold a courtesy affiliation as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program, which is part of the Elliott School of International Affairs.

My work at the Center for Naval Analyses has produced public, government-sponsored reports on Russian wartime civil-military relations, the Russia-Iran relationship, the Russian military logistics system, Russian strategic competition and military strategy, and developments in Russian AI and autonomy, among other research products. Alongside academic coauthors, I have a new book, Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism, recently published at the University of Michigan Press. Pick up a copy of our book today (30% off on the publisher's with "UMF24")!

​In addition to my work on authoritarianism and Russian political-military affairs, I have written extensively on ideological illiberalism in Russia, Europe, and the Anglo-American world, focusing on scholarly conceptual issues, ideological production under the Putin regime, illiberal politics in Eastern Europe, postliberalism in the UK and US, Catholic integralism, and right-illiberal ideological dynamics more generally. Finally, my Ph.D research and its subsequent evolution has focused on parliamentary and conciliar bodies under electoral authoritarian rule, studying the place of elite plenary institutions in longstanding, non-democratic political orders.

My academic work has been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals such as Political Studies Review, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, ​The Journal of Advanced Military Studies, The Journal of International Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, The Journal of Illiberalism Studies, The International Journal of Constitutional Law, and Social Media + Society. My analytic and policy-oriented writing can be found in publication outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, War on the Rocks, American Purpose, American Affairs, RIDDLE Russia, Russia Matters, The University Bookman, Church-Life Journal, FUSION, 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. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in the Russian Federation,  Ukraine, and Germany. 

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