I am an Associate Research Professor in the Political Science department at Johns Hopkins University. I study perceptions of deservingness, attitudes toward income inequality, and the politics of distribution.
I joined Johns Hopkins from the University of Memphis, where I was assistant professor of political science from 2019 to 2023. Prior to that, I served as program director of the Anxieties of Democracy and Media & Democracy programs at the Social Science Research Council.
I earned my Ph.D. (Harvard University, 2013) in political science, with a focus on political psychology and behavior. I also hold an M.Phil in European Politics from Oxford University, and a B.A. in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University.
I was born in Estonia, grew up in Sweden, attended college in England, and went to graduate school in New England – as a result, I identify as a “third culture kid”. I have a finite Erdős number of 6 and am incredibly unlikely to ever get a finite Erdős–Bacon number.
If you are here because you want to find out whether I am related to President Trump, you can find some answers in this Guardian story from 2019 or this Vox story from 2016, both of which cover the experience of repeatedly saying “no relation” upon first meeting people.