About

I’m a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science and the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. My research interests include international trade, emerging technology, and democratic backsliding, with a general focus on the political economy of globalization.

My dissertation project examines the domestic politics of dual-use export controls. While export controls justified under national-security have grown exponentially over the past decade, the puzzle motivating my project is the variation beneath that rising mean: the restrictions we observe track the security threats meant to justify them surprisingly poorly. I argue that this variation stems from the inverted distributive politics of export controls: where tariffs concentrate benefits and diffuse costs, export controls concentrate costs (on particular export-oriented firms and congressional districts) while providing a diffuse national benefit (“national security”). I expect that ordinary coalition politics (lobbying, logrolling, and contests over where control thresholds sit) shape which products are restricted, which firms win exceptions, and which legislators defect from the national consensus.

I received my B.A. in Political Science / International Relations from UC San Diego, graduating magna cum laude and with High Honors, and I received my M.A. in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University, where I graduated with High Honors.

You can download my CV here.