I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Until August 2022, I was a Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Previously, I was a PostDoc at the International Conflict Research Group at ETH Zurich and a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

I will be on leave in the fall of 2024.

My research focuses on state building and its effects on local development and conflict, in particular in Africa. My most recent work explores the reciprocal relationship between ethnic geographies and (sub-)national political borders in Africa and Europe since the 19th century.

Throughout, I innovate and use computational methods to collect and analyze large, mostly geospatial datasets. My work has been published or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, International Organization, World Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and others.