Welcome! I am a Professor and the Glenn B. and Cleone Orr Hawkins Chair
at the Department of Political
Science at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison, where I serve as the Associate Chair and Director
of Graduate Studies. I am also currently the President-Elect of the Midwest Political Science
Association. I am a Faculty Affiliate at the La Follette School of Public
Affairs, the Data Science
Institute, the Elections
Research Center, and the Center for South Asia. I
previously directed the Center for
South Asia.
My research focuses on the political economy of development and migration, and on inequalities in political representation, mainly in South Asia. I am currently working on a book, joint with Saumitra Jha, on the conditions under which mass, nonviolent mobilizations can succeed. I am the co-author, with Bethany Lacina, of a book on the backlash against within-country migration across the developing world, published by Cambridge University Press. My research has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the International Growth Centre.
Prior to starting at UW–Madison, I was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. I have worked at the Center for Global Development and the International Monetary Fund, and received a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University, and a BA in political science and economics from Yale University. My pronouns are he/him.