I am a PhD Candidate (ABD) in the Department of Political Science and graduate fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL and a graduate of the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities with a B.A. magna cum laude in Political Science and Global Studies.
My research primarily focuses on the role of information in politics, especially in the U.S. context. I am particularly interested in how mass attitudes reflect an interaction between the broader information environment - including the mass media and political elites - and individual-level attributes - namely citizens' psychological traits, prior knowledge and opinions, motivation, and affect. My dissertation focuses on incorporating issues of information choice and over-time opinion dynamics into the study of political communication and opinion formation.
Using both survey and experimental methods, I attempt to study public opinion and political behavior from the perspectives of social and cognitive psychology, mass communication, and democratic theory. In addition to my substantive research interests, I am currently working on methodological projects related to nonrandom treatment assignment, internet-based experimentation, and interaction effects in observational studies.
My dissertation advisor is Jamie Druckman and I currently serve as the Coordinator for the Northwestern Political Science Undergraduate Research Participant Requirement in the Northwestern Political Science Research Lab (PSRL).