I am interested in the intricacies of human behavior.
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, I completed my BA from the University of Portland in 2015 in Political Science and French Studies. Feeling that I still had a lot to learn, I moved to Montréal where I completed my MA in Political Science from McGill University in 2017. My masters thesis focused on populist radical right party voters in the UK and their voting behavior in the 2015 UK General Election. Sure that I wanted to complete a PhD, I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Between 2017 and 2021, I completed my PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan, focusing on comparative politics and political methodology.
During my PhD, I researched how to measure the behavior of hard-to-reach populations using novel data sources. Through my training in quantitative text analysis, causal methods, and data modeling, I studied the behavior of elected officials in France, Germany, and the UK using their social media accounts. For this, I compiled a dataset of Facebook and Twitter data of over 1,000 politicians from 2017 to 2020. This was the first dataset of its kind, combining demographic information of the politicians in addition to having multiple years, multiple countries, and multiple social media platforms. My dissertation starts with understanding why we need to study individual politicians (as opposed to the party), creates guidelines on how to use these data, and presents a case study with novel findings from the data.
In the Fall of 2020, I became a researcher on a grant-funded international and cross-functional project out of the University of Zurich. We researched legal argumentation techniques in the European Court of Human Rights. This project uses qualitative, quantitative, and machine-learning methods to analyze word usage in these legal cases. In March of 2022, I started at YouGov where I work on political survey research for media, tech, and academic clients.
Outside of my research and work, I live in Seattle with my husband, Chris, and dogs, Theo and Ollie. I am an avid baker and love to cook. I am currently (still) trying to perfect the sourdough loaf.