Postdoc offer!!! More soon, but I'm immensely excited and honored.

Article accepted!!!!! Will share more soon but excited to have our dataset on democratic erosion as an events based process as a paper out soon in Nature!

Protest scholars: I'm looking for event data on protests that covers the 2000s to early 2010s. I'm trying to track democracy protests globally but ACLED doesn't seem to have pre-2016 for most countries and most of the existing ones I know of aren't at the event level. All help much appreciated!

Two day workshop on the international dimensions of democratic backsliding at UChicago ✔️ had the pleasure of presenting some of my dissertation work on the effects of foreign cues on support for oppositions in backsliding democracies.

Oppositions often seek out international support. My dissertation offers some insights on how such foreign pressure shapes attitudes toward opposition actors using a conjoint in Hungary. I'll be presenting my research on this today at UChicago's Backsliding workshop! abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

Heading back to the US! Excited to be presenting my dissertation work on international pressure and attitudes toward the opposition (using a conjoint I just fielded in Hungary, paper on my website) at UChicago's Intl. Dimensions of Democratic Backsliding Workshop: events.uchicago.edu/event/intern...

Had the pleasure of presenting work in progress with @hmridge.bsky.social on support for backsliding at the Political Behavior Lab at UHaifa! Thanks to Liran Harsgor and Israel Waismel-Manor for the kind invitation and great feedback! Added bonus: an awesome view on the way up to the university.

Thrilled to be giving a talk next week at the University of Haifa! I’ll be presenting work in progress with Hannah Ridge.

Anyone I know that speaks German willing to take a quick look at translations for a few survey items I'm looking to add to a study in Germany? It's 4 items and shouldn't take too long (I hope!). Thanks in advance! :)

@mattgrossmann.bsky.social, Caleb Lucas, and I are thrilled to have an updated version of CongressData (V3). In it, we offer new data, including on the 19th century, data on polarization, among others. See our GitHub: github.com/IPPSR/Congre..., R package, and Shiny: cspp.ippsr.msu.edu/congress/

Getting a journal rejection and a grant award in the same morning within minutes of each other! Happy Thanksgiving.

My report on Nonviolent Action against Democratic Erosion is finally out today @harvardash.bsky.social! I try to put the US democracy movement into global comparative perspective. For the tl;dr crowd, see below for some key takeaways: ash.harvard.edu/resources/no...

Now that it's up online, I guess it's official: I'm on the job market! I study democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, and nonviolent resistance. My dissertation focuses on the nexus of domestic and international factors in shaping opposition to democratic erosion: polisci.msu.edu/graduate/hir...

R&R!!! What a terrific way to end the week.

Getting survey data back is always an exciting moment! Huge thanks to @prl.bsky.social for letting @hmridge.bsky.social and I include our conjoint experiment in your larger survey!! Results soon…

@liampert.bsky.social, @mattgrossmann.bsky.social, and I are thrilled to launch SenateData, a new repository pertaining to the US Senate. We have variables on facets like bills, and members, including original data on senator characteristics and an associated R package. github.com/IPPSR/Senate...

Party leaders often face a tough choice: should they join forces with other parties in pre-electoral coalitions or run alone? The stakes are even higher when opposition parties try to unseat an authoritarian incumbent.

Couldn't have said this better myself. Thomas's threads are always on point.

Thanks to @verasight.bsky.social, I was able to include a question at APSA. Given my line of work, I asked respondents (N=1,000, in the US) to weigh the extent to which they believed it was worth allying with groups you strongly disagree with to defend democracy (a common dilemma oppositions face).

It's been an exciting month working as a predoctoral fellow at JHU's @snfagora.bsky.social with Consuelo Amat! Nice to see my bio up on the SNF website: snfagora.jhu.edu/directory/be...

So happy to see this out! We caution against excessive optimism that the opposition will restore countries back to their democratic trajectories after electoral victory. Weakened institutions and the memory of repression makes it tempting to continue rather than buck the trend of autocratization.

First in person APSA ✔️! I had the pleasure of presenting my job market research on opposition to democratic backsliding, meeting old and new friends from around the world, and exploring Vancouver.

Had the pleasure of presenting my dissertation work on international pressure and opposition to democratic backsliding this morning at APSA in Vancouver. Grateful to attendees, @lgamboa.bsky.social and @orcunselcuk.bsky.social for discussant comments, and an excellent discussion on backsliding!

APSA and Vancouver bound! I’m thrilled to have organized the panel, “democratic backsliding and opposition resistance,” taking place tomorrow at 8am PT. I’ll be presenting findings from my dissertation on international pressure and opposition to democratic erosion along with some great scholars.

I’m pleased to share that my review of @alexislerner.bsky.social’s new book is out @iajournal.bsky.social. It’s an excellent book that draws attentions to street art as a tool oppositions can use in dictatorships but also how dictators can co-opt such strategies. academic.oup.com/ia/article-a...

APSA paper submitted! I'm excited to share that I'll be presenting one of my dissertation papers, in which I examine the effect of international rhetoric on opposition movement behavior in backsliding democracies, using an original dataset of US Secretary of State speeches. I'm also on the market!

🚨 New in Journal of Politics! 🚨 Do radical right parties need to cut ties with old dictatorships to succeed? 👉 @sergipardos.bsky.social and my study of Spain’s VOX says: ❌ Not necessarily.

Today officially marks my first day as a predoctoral fellow @snfagora.bsky.social! I'll be working with @consueloamat.bsky.social on lots of cool things related to nonviolent resistance and democracy. I'm grateful for this opportunity and the many people in my department @ MSU for their support.

Finally, a paper from my dissertation submitted for review!!

Now that it's up online, I guess it's official: I'm on the job market! I study democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, and nonviolent resistance. My dissertation focuses on the nexus of domestic and international factors in shaping opposition to democratic erosion: polisci.msu.edu/graduate/hir...

Before my PhD, I worked mostly in arts and media. Regimes invest lots in AV media, but Pol Sci largely doesn't engage it. So I was thrilled to see images in the proofs for Film-Making the Nation Great Again with @draege.bsky.social. We analyze autocrats' AV instrumentalizations of history.

My undergrad RA, Jeanette Dompreh, recently presented some descriptive results from the data collection she's been helping me with for my dissertation on US Secretary of State rhetoric and pro-democracy movements. One of the most exciting parts about working with undergrads. Check it out!

Overleaf down for anyone else by any chance?

Anyone I know have experience solving issues with text data in R or Python? I'm having spillover of my speech data into my metadata cols (e.g., location) and trying to figure out how to merge those back into the actual speech data col. Any and all help much appreciated. Thank you!!

Book review accepted and forthcoming in @iajournal.bsky.social! I had the pleasure of reviewing @alexislerner.bsky.social's book on the role of graffiti in resistance to dictatorship. Lerner makes "a compelling case for expanding the study of dissent beyond mass mobilization and digital activism."

This has been in the works since early 2023, but it finally happened: Israel’s AG was fired. This was halted after mass domestic and international pressure initially but those things have since largely dwindled, especially internationally. www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-f...

Has anyone I know ever had an unexpected event during survey design? I’ve been reading @jordimunoz.bsky.social’s excellent work on this but I had some questions. Thanks in advance!!

Great work by my friend and colleague, @abbycassario.bsky.social!

I’m thrilled and honored to share that I’ll be a predoctoral fellow during the 2025-2026 academic year at the SNF Institute at John's Hopkins working with Consuelo Amat on all things nonviolent resistance and democratic backsliding, and finishing my dissertation by the middle of 2026. More soon!

Feeling really grateful and thankful to the Polarization Research Lab at Stanford for agreeing to fund my study with Hannah Ridge on democratic backsliding! More details to come soon.

R&R for one of my pieces on democratic backsliding and again at a top journal!!

Back in Tel Aviv for a little bit: DM me if you want to meet/grab coffee.

Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy Our new open-access article in Nature Scientific Data: rdcu.be/evEpj

I'm very pleased to share that my paper, "Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy," coauthored with @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and Caleb Lucas is now out (open-access!) at Nature Scientific Data. nature.com/articles/s41...

There are competing definitions of anti-semitism, but if you are using stars of David and arrows to connect different Jewish people in a conspiracy theory, you are 100% there.

Not so hot take: open-ended responses to surveys can be *wild* sometimes.

I’m thrilled to share that my paper, coauthored with @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and Caleb Lucas, was just accepted for publication at Nature Scientific Data!

Proportionally, the estimated 100-200k Pride marchers in Budapest today would correspond to something approaching 1m in London or New York. And this in a country that has now spent 15 years under illiberal, authoritarian rule. What a symbol of hope.

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban