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I am a PhD candidate in the department of Political Science at Duke University entering the job market in the fall of 2007. My specializations are in international security, international diplomacy, civil conflict, ethnic politics, statistical methods, and computational modeling. I have also taken extensive graduate-level coursework in political philosophy. My current research interests focus on the relationships between communication network structures and the emergence of armed conflict at both the domestic and international levels. I have designed and taught courses on ethnic identity and guerilla warfare and have led sections in a variety of traditional International Relations subdisciplines including: international law and institutions, national security policy, and international political economy.
Since the beginning of my studies, my research interests have been motivated by a desire to uncover patterns in the brutal and costly episodes of collective violence which occur both within and between nations, and a genuine fascination regarding the forces underlying the construction of national allegiances. My dissertation, entitled "Communicative Structure and the Emergence of Armed Conflict," is founded on the theoretical instinct that the study of collective armed violence could be greatly improved through an expanded conceptual focus beyond the material and institutional bases of collective power to the communicative bases of collective power. Drawing on research from a diverse array of disciplines, ranging from psychology and neuroscience to economics and sociology, I develop a new theoretical framework that I term "communicative structuralism." The central claim of this framework is that the communicative processes upon which the formation of collective identities and loyalties are based, are structurally constrained in systematic ways. More specifically, it claims that public communicative structures, those which transmit synchronized messages and thus generate joint awareness of those messages amongst a collective audience, are central to the development of both national and sub-national allegiances because they create communities of shared experience. >>
View my entire CV by following the link below or in pdf format.
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