Welcome!

I am an assistant professor at the Howard H. Baker Jr. School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where I am also a faculty affiliate with the Center for National Security and Foreign Affairs.

​I study several topics related to international security, with a focus on nuclear strategy and operations. My book project builds upon archival and original interview data with political and military elites to explain variation in regional nuclear power command and control systems.

My most recent work is Atomic Backfires: When Nuclear Policies Fail, forthcoming with MIT Press. This volume contains a collection of chapters evaluating how the most commonly employed tools in nuclear policy may not only fail to accomplish their stated objectives, but may also produce unanticipated and counterproductive consequences for international security.

I was previously the Rossetti Senior Research Fellow at the U.S. Air Force Academy's Institute for Future Conflict. Prior to that, I held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. I was also a predoctoral Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program and a Carnegie International Politics Scholars Consortium and Network (IPSCON) predoctoral fellow at John Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

I hold a Ph.D. and master's degree in political science from Syracuse University, as well as a master's degree in international affairs from the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions.