I am an Assistant Professor in the Government Department at Harvard, and I received my PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 2022.
My research uses multiple methods to explore the bidirectional relationship between place and politics – both how politics shape places, and how places shape political identity and behavior. My first book, How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (order from Princeton University Press), takes up one piece of this, showing how place intersects with race, class, and religion in shaping the rightward turn across the industrial Heartland. It draws on a comparative study of three White, postindustrial cities during the 2020 presidential election to argue that we can best understand the reddening of the American Heartland by examining how local contexts have sped up or slowed down White voters’ turn toward the right.
In other research, I have examined how New Deal social polices reshaped political participation across different local contexts; how place reputation shaped gentrification processes in a Chicago neighborhood; and how redistricting into powerful wards in Chicago affects crime and city service provision.
I am currently conducting fieldwork in California and Massachusetts for a new project on place and politics in coastal suburbs.
My research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Studies in American Political Development, Social Forces, and Social Problems, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.