Welcome! I am a fourth year PhD Candidate in Government at Cornell University. I study comparative politics with a regional focus on East-Central Europe. For the 2024-25 AY, I am a visiting Title VIII fellow at Uniwersytet SWPS (Warszawa), in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Polish National Election Study.

My dissertation focuses on how civil society organizations selectively cooperate with backsliding incumbents, and the circumstances in which this can contribute to depolarization. I also maintain ongoing research agendas on political communication and conspiracy theories, democratic preferences and resilience, and public opinion. I utilize a variety of methods in my research including surveys, interviews, archival work, and observational causal inference techniques.

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. In Spring 2024, I was a Junior Visiting Scholar and Brettschneider Exchange Student at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

My work has been published or is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics and Government and Opposition, and an edited volume from Cambridge University Press, and has been generously supported by the US Department of Education, APSA Centennial Center, Hoover Institution, Roper Center, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, American Councils, and Cornell Einaudi Center.

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. I also co-organize the East European Politics Graduate Workshop.

Hailing from North Carolina, I’m an avid fan of the Tar Heels and prefer Eastern to Western NC BBQ.

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.