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I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs at Texas A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service and a core faculty member with the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy. Previously, I was a Rosenwald Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security and Niehaus Postdoctoral Fellow at The John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2021.
I'm a scholar of international security with expertise in security cooperation, irregular warfare, and Eastern Europe. My work draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods, particularly elite interviews and fieldwork with American and European militaries and policymakers. My book project, Advising War, examines military advising during wartime. It challenges the conventional view of advisors as mere technical experts, showing instead that their role is profoundly social and political. Through interpersonal relationships, advisors extend great power influence to local militaries. The project draws on original quantitative and archival data, as well as over 160 interviews and fieldwork in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. My dissertation on this topic received an honorable mention for Best Dissertation (2022) from the American Political Science Association’s International Collaboration section. My research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, International Politics, the International Studies Review, Defence Studies, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and several edited volumes. My policy analysis and commentary has also been published in leading outlets like Foreign Affairs. My work has been funded by the Defense Security Cooperation University, the United States Institute of Peace and the Minerva Research Initiative, the Notre Dame International Security Center, The Charles Koch Foundation, and The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, and The Social Sciences Research Center at the University of Chicago. I also co-host the Irregular Warfare Podcast, bridging the gap between irregular warfare scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The podcast is hosted by the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a joint production of Princeton's Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point. I earned a B.S. in Foreign Service from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with a concentration in International Security and a minor in Russia and East European Studies. I speak intermediate Polish and basic Russian and held internships or fellowships with The RAND Corporation, the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, and the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. |
All photographs were taken by Alexandra Chinchilla or shared with the permission of those pictured.