Welcome!
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan.
My research focuses on:
1) What tactics do media and civil society organizations use to build public trust in evidence-based sources, such as fact-checking?
2) Do shared experiences and emotions facilitate common ground across party lines?
3) How does social science research use careful measurement and inferences to answer these important questions?
My methodological expertise lies in designing and conducting surveys and experiments, and measuring psychological tendencies not directly observable.
I investigate the social dynamics around uninformed and misinformed beliefs about politics. Such beliefs give rise to distrust, prejudice, and violence that may destabilize democracy. While some political actors generate baseless claims to instigate divisions, other actors and groups—such as civil society organizations, media, scientists, and government—work to mitigate its spread and social divisions. I hope that my work contributes to these latter efforts.
My research has been supported by the Gerald R. Ford Fellowship, the Garth Taylor Dissertation Fellowship in Public Opinion, and the Converse-Miller Fellowship in American Political Behavior, among others. I am a Next Generation scholar at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.