Biography

Hi! I’m an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. I am particularly interested in two key topics: (1) how status hierarchies are formed and formalized, and their attendant consequences for social inequality; and (2) how societies can reduce extreme intergroup conflict, with emphasis on partisan animosity in the contemporary United States.

I tend to write papers that develop and test middle-range theories where propositions are formally defined, logically coherent, and avoid circularity. I try to draw on the best possible methods and data to either develop new theory or test key predictions. This commitment explains the diversity of methods and data sources deployed across my research – including survey and field experiments, social network analysis, and ethnography. I often pair complementary methods, including case studies with a representative survey; social network methods with agent-based models; or ethnography with text analysis.

You can find my work in journals like American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Administrative Science Quarterly, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Journal of Labor Economics.