Welcome! I am a fourth year PhD Candidate in Government at Cornell University. My research focuses on questions surrounding democratic backsliding, civil society, and political communication. To do so, I utilize a variety of methods including surveys, interviews, archival work, and observational causal inference techniques. For the 2024-25 AY, I will be a visiting Title VIII fellow at Uniwersytet SWPS (Warszawa), in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Democracy.

Prior to Cornell, I earned my AM in Russian, East European, and Central Asian studies from Harvard University and a BA in History and Political Science with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

My work has been published or is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics and Government and Opposition, and has been generously supported by the US Departments of State and Education, Hoover Institution, Roper Center, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, American Councils, and Cornell Einaudi Center. I also co-organize the East European Politics Graduate Workshop.

At Cornell, I am an affiliate of the Center on Global Democracy, Institute for European Studies, and Cornell Center for the Social Sciences and a graduate research assistant for the Russian Election Study. In Spring 2024, I was a Junior Visiting Scholar and Brettschneider Exchange Student at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about myself or my work, applying to graduate school, or for a copy of my CV. You can contact me at kfc45 [at] cornell [dot] edu.