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I am an Assistant Professor of Politics at University of San Francisco. I also direct the African Studies program. I use ethnography, focus groups, surveys, and experimental methods to examine the political conditions under which democratic activity and accountability develop in poor urban communities, specifically in Africa.
My research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, University of Wisconsin, and USF. I was a Research Associate at the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana in 2012. I received my PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the department of political science in 2014. During the academic year 2014-15, I was a Visiting Lecturer of Politics at Bates College. In 2016, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, working with the Center for Sustainable Urban Development. I curate the weekly news bulletin This Week in Africa.
Prior to graduate school, I graduated with honors from Northwestern University and served as a Program Coordinator for the Illinois Education Foundation (now One Million Degrees).