My research is focused on the study of political violence, gender-based violence, and social movements and contentious politics in Africa and South Asia. I am a mixed-methods researcher: my work combines insights from in-depth, multi-sited fieldwork with analyses of quantitative conflict datasets. Through such approaches, I seek to uncover both broad patterns of violence and trace the causal mechanisms that generate conflict. I am also interested in the philosophy of social science and in small-N cross-regional comparisons.

My first book, Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India (Cambridge University Press 2024), develops a theoretical and empirical account of the relationship between elites, political parties, and party-based violence. This research is based on a cross-regional comparison of Kenya and India with subnational comparisons in the two countries.

A second long-term project seeks to explain why some incidents of sexual violence result in mass protests while others do not. I am especially interested in understanding how the efforts of feminist activists and media reporters inform ordinary citizens' willingness to take to the streets. I have completed initial fieldwork for this project in India and South Africa, where I am studying variations in public responses to a number of lethal rapes. I am conducting further fieldwork in both countries in 2024. My research for this project has received generous support from the Women, Gender, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, and the International Peace Research Association Foundation (IPRAF). 

To date, my research has taken me to Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Cambodia, India, and Nepal where I have studied various facets of conflict and conflict resolution. I have also conducted policy analysis for the World Bank and the United Nations, and my writing and analyses have appeared in public-facing outlets such as the Monkey Cage blog at The Washington Post, The Conversation (Africa), Deutsche Welle, and Vox.