I am a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago and a 2020-21 USIP-Minerva Peace and Security Scholar. I am also a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow with the Notre Dame International Security Center. My research examines how great powers use training and advising to directly shape the militaries of states and armed non-state actors. I also explore how this training and advising, in turn, affects political violence, democracy, human rights, and civil-military relations. My dissertation examines how great powers intervene in civil wars using training and advising as a means to manage local partners who do not share their interests and lack military capacity. Using game theory, original quantitative data, interviews with US military advisors, and case studies of US and Russian intervention, I show how great powers use military advisors as a key tool to manage the local partner by monitoring and influencing its military.
My work is published in International Politics and supported by The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts and The Social Sciences Research Center at the University of Chicago. I am also the Senior Data Research Fellow at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), where I lead the Data Analytics team in producing research on suicide terrorism and conflict for both academic and policy audiences. I earned an MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and a BS 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 Polish and some Russian and held internships or fellowships with The RAND Corporation, the Political-Economic section at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, and the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. |