“The Disclosure Dilemma: Nuclear Intelligence and International Organization,” co-authored with Allison Carnegie, has been published in EarlyView for the American Journal of Political Science. Check it out here!

You may also want to read the AJPS editor’s comments on the qualitative transparency process used for “The Disclosure Dilemma.” See here.

CSPAN covered a book launch event for Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

See the full video here!

Join me on March 13 in Washington, D.C. at The Wilson Center for a discussion about my book Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics. Details and RSVP link for the event are here.

Join me for a conversation with John Mearsheimer about my book Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics on March 11 @ 6pm at the Seminary Co-op in Hyde Park, Chicago.

Details on the event are here.

I answered questions about my book Secret Wars and doled out some advice for grad students in a Q&A session with E-IR. Check it out here.

I talked about the origins, key themes, and implications of my book Secret Wars in a “First Time Author Spotlight” with the Princeton University Press authors blog. Read it here.

Blah blah. Link here.

I am Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Among other topics, I study secrecy and intelligence and their relationship to International Relations theory, international security, and global governance.  Much of my research explores how governments and other actors selectively reveal and conceal what they do. I am fascinated by the disjuncture this creates between the “front stage” and “back stage” of international politics.

My first book, published in 2018 by Princeton University Press, analyzed how states use covert forms of military intervention to contain the escalation potential of modern war. My second book, co-authored with Allison Carnegie, assessed the disclosure dilemmas that states face when intelligence and other kinds of sensitive information are important to the work of international organizations. I am working on a third book project on what I am calling “intelligence infrastructure” — i.e., the physical sites and installations which are required to operate most modern surveillance systems — and its importance to diplomacy and power politics. Related articles have assessed covert action as a signaling device and how states conceal violations of international rules of the game to protect them.

Some of my more recent research has addressed other topics. Some examples are when and why elderly leaders are seen as senile, how implicit racism works its way into the everyday work of intelligence analysis, and why the U.S. chose to debut atomic weaponry in an especially lethal way. My research has been published in International Organization, American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Security Studies, and Journal of Conflict Resolution.

I graduated with a Ph.D. in Political Science from Ohio State University in 2013 and joined the faculty of University of Chicago in 2015. I have held research fellowships at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University, the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.