Teaching

I teach political science as a set of tools for understanding real-world problems. My courses ask students to build fluency with those tools and apply them to real cases, not just read about them. My goal is for students to leave with genuine competence in the tools of social science and an appreciation for them. That way, they can carry this fluency into whatever careers, civic roles, or life paths they pursue.

Current Courses

Protest, Resistance, and Government Response

Spring 2026, Fall 2026 · Syllabus

POLI 369 combines two of my interests: contentious politics as a field and modeling as a way of thinking. The course is built around a set of substantive questions in the study of protests and government response, which we pursue by building and testing an agent-based model together. The relationship runs both ways: students learn what protest theory can and can’t explain by watching it succeed or fail inside a simulation, and they learn what modeling is actually for by using it to sharpen real arguments about protest. I provide the baseline simulation, and across a sequence of memos, each module adds a new layer — a new role, a new mechanism, a new strategic dimension — built from what students proposed in the previous round. Students diagnose the strategic problem facing a given role, propose a strategy grounded in that week’s readings, predict how it will perform, and then find out whether their theoretical bets actually survive contact with everyone else’s strategy once the simulations run.

Applied Research Methods

Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026 · Syllabus

Applied Research Methods is the latter half of the undergraduate methods sequence at Rice, where I get to mentor undergraduate research. Students work in self-chosen groups to pursue a question of their own choosing, developing it into something that comes as close as possible to an actual political science research paper — a causal inference framework, real-world data, and a defensible research design. Working through question, design, data, and analysis in small, iterative steps, students learn firsthand how data limitations, researcher choices, and methodological trade-offs matter and become better consumers of research they will encounter for the rest of their lives.

Introduction to International Relations

Spring 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026 · Syllabus

Introduction to International Relations serves two roles at once: a foundational course for political science majors, and a standalone overview of the field for students taking it to satisfy Rice’s core curriculum requirement. The course examines international conflict, cooperation, trade, and governance through the lens of strategic interaction, before turning to ever-salient issues such as climate change, terrorism, and great-power conflict. Assignments ask students to apply course material to real-world cases and current policy questions, with the final exam being a one-on-one oral exam rather than a written test.

Introduction to Comparative Politics

Fall 2024, Fall 2025 · Syllabus

Introduction to Comparative Politics serves two roles at once: a foundational course for political science majors, and a standalone overview of the field for students taking it to satisfy Rice’s core curriculum requirement. The course moves from the origins of and variation in modern state capacity, through the institutions and varieties of both democracies and authoritarian regimes, to how regime type itself shapes outcomes like economic growth, welfare, and human rights. Assignments ask students to apply course material to real-world cases from around the world, with the final module asking them to turn the comparative toolkit they’ve built over the semester back on a single, familiar case: the United States.

Past Courses

Rice University

Applied Econometrics for Policy Analysis (Syllabus)
Protest and Political Violence, Senior Seminar (Syllabus)

University of Kentucky

Dynamics of International Law (Syllabus)
Conduct of American Foreign Relations (Syllabus)
International Organizations (Syllabus)
Honors Thesis in Political Science (Syllabus)
International Political Economy (Syllabus)

University of Denver

Globalization and Knowledge Economy (Syllabus)
Major Issues in International Security (Syllabus)
Contemporary Issues in Political Economy (Syllabus)
Dragons, Mutants, and Drug Dealers: Advanced Topics in IR and IPE through Pop Culture (Syllabus)

Graduate Workshops

Math Workshop for Graduate Students (Syllabus)
Causal Inference (DAGs) Workshop for Graduate Students (Syllabus)

Teaching Assistant

Contemporary Issues in Political Economy (Undergraduate level)
International Politics (Graduate level)