I am a political science instructor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (Kuskokwim Campus). This fall, I am teaching Introduction to American Politics and a political economy class on rural Alaska. Previously, I taught a class on The Politics of Groups and Identities at UC Berkeley. Also at UC Berkeley, I was a graduate student instructor for a range of classes on American politics, American public policy, game theory, and African American political thought.

Overall, my research concerns institutional development, democracy, and ideology. In Alaska, my research focuses on the politics of expertise and inequality amid environmental change. I am especially interested in how democratic institutions can be structured to make use of different types of knowledge (i.e., expert knowledge among bureaucratic policymakers and local knowledge among those affected by policies). So far, I have approached these questions historically and theoretically, and I am now engaged in directly relating these ideas to policy issues around natural resource governance.

I recently received my PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley. My dissertation uses game theory and historical case studies to investigate the development of legal authority in early America. Prior to UC Berkeley, I attended Reed College, where I majored in political science and economics.