Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Houston and a licensed attorney. My research lies at the intersection of public opinion, public policy, and law, drawing on insights from political psychology to understand how policy design and misperceptions influence what people think about government programs (including the civil justice system) and about the people who benefit from them.

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My dissertation explores how specific features of policy design shape public perceptions of the people who receive benefits and affect support for programs like welfare and housing vouchers. I also study what the public knows or thinks they know about policy using state-level surveys. Using survey experiments, I test whether correcting these misperceptions about policy design can increase support for social policy and improve perceptions of policy beneficiaries.  

 

Beyond my dissertation, I investigate how perceptions of who deserves government help shape public attitudes across a range of policy areas (including the civil justice system). In a related line of research, I also consider the downstream consequences of these attitudes -- such as how disagreements over policy can contribute to support for political violence.

 

My research is generously funded by the Rapoport Family Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation.

 

I am a 2025–26 Early Career Fellow with APSA’s Experimental Research section and APSA’s Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior (EPOVB) section. In 2026, I received the American Bar Foundation’s Access to Justice Early-Career Award.

 

My work has been published in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, and the Cleveland State Law Review. 

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I am on the 2025–26 academic job market and always happy to connect.

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