Research Areas

International political economy; global financial politics; financial derivatives; regulation; risk and uncertainty; power, authority, and legitimacy in international politics; global inequality

Professional Bio

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2017 and both a B.A. in International Studies and a B.S. in Economics from American University in 2011.

My current book project examines the financial market practices through which both the market for over-the-counter derivatives and the authority of private financial actors were constructed. Through an interpretive analysis of regulatory documents, I find that practices like risk modelling, standardized contracts, and collateralization reassured public regulators of the market’s ability to govern itself even as these practices were inadequate and in some cases destabilizing during the 2008 financial crisis. Nonetheless, because these practices were constitutive of the market, and because private market actors were closely involved in the post-crisis regulatory effort, these were the practices public regulators reached for in the aftermath of the crisis, reinscribing private financial authority and the crisis-prone nature of the OTC derivatives market.

My second strand of research focuses on the IPE of global inequality, which I contend is sufficiently distinct from both poverty and development and from national inequality to constitute a unique object of inquiry. I am currently working on a paper exploring Oxfam’s attempts to politicize the highly unequal global distribution of wealth and income through its annual global inequality reports. I am also interested in finance’s contribution to global inequality and the backlash to financial power, including its antisemitic versions on the political right and left.