I am a fellow at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California, and the author of Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2019; order here). Based on months of in-depth field research, Contentious Rituals explores why people choose to participate in controversial Northern Irish parades. In the book, I use a careful study of these parades to examine broader questions about national identity, social movement mobilization, and ethnic conflict in contemporary divided societies and in the lives of their citizens.
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I received my Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 2015, and have held research positions at the RAND Corporation, Columbia Global Policy Initiative, and the Chumir Foundation. My research has been published or is forthcoming in several RAND reports, Disasters, and Terrorism & Political Violence. I have also written for such publications as The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.