I have a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in political science specializing in military effectiveness and security sector adaptation. My dissertation project looks at the ethnic exclusion in and effectiveness of contemporary militaries and explores their origins in the colonial era. As part of my dissertation I introduce a novel cross-national dataset of colonial military structures through archival research in British and French archives. My argument is twofold: 1) colonizing powers varied the design of their colonies militaries, both between colonizers and across a single colonizer's multiple colonies and 2) the presence of veto actors in the immediate post-independence period "locked in" these institutional structures. 

In addition to support from UC Berkeley, my research has been supported by the United States Institute of Peace, Center for African Studies (UC Berkeley), UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust, Institute of International Studies (UC Berkeley), and Center for American Democracy (UC Berkeley). I received my BA in political science and communication studies from UCLA 

(Go Bruins!).