Doctoral Candidate
About
I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan, specializing in comparative politics. I study the politics of authoritarian regimes and collective action, particularly in Russia and the former Soviet Union. My research examines why autocratic regimes, which rely on coercion to maintain power, promise concessions to protestors. In my dissertation, "Protest Mobilization, Concessions, and Policy Change in Autocracies”, I argue that reneging, or deliberately failing to deliver concessions as promised, is a fundamental strategic dimension of concessions, which allows non-democratic governments to demobilize protest movements while resisting long-term change. Methodologically, I combine quantitative, qualitative and formal approaches.
My research has been supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Carnegie Corporation-Harriman Institute Research Grants for Ph.D. Students in the Social Sciences, and a Weiser Emerging Democracies Fellowship, among other grants. I was a WCED Graduate Fellow from 2014-15. I hold an MA in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Regional Studies and a BA in Slavic Studies from Columbia University.
Fields of Study:
- Comparative Politics
- Authoritarian Politics
- Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia
- Methodology
