Welcome to my website. I recently completed my doctorate in political science at the University of North Texas. Most of the content on this site is out-of-date, but you can check out the projects page to get a grasp on some of my past projects. I've also started working on a little demo using data from my dissertation which you can find here (it'll take a minute to load).

 

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I'm interested in the microdynamics of civil war. The last two decades of civil war research has predominantly focused on explaining structural characteristics of states which make them more likely experience civil war. This has been an invaluable line of work for the international community, but much of its findings get thrown out the window after fighting breaks out. My research agenda focuses on what happens next. Which communities are most threatened by ongoing conflict, when does this threat escalate, and under what conditions does it diminish? I take theory and data-driven approaches to these questions and employ rigorous methodologies to get a fix on precisely when and where populations are most at risk of being caught in the cross-fire of civil war.

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My dissertation is entitled "Finding the Frontlines of Civil War: Ethnic Networks, Territorial Control and Competition." The project builds on a simple premise: Combatants prefer to control territories whose population supports their war effort. In many war-torn countries, ethnicity provides a useful signal about a community's preferences. Combatants tap into ethnic networks and use them to adjust the cost/benefit calculus of deciding where to capture and control territory. If an armed group is looking to expand its frontlines, following the group's ethnic ties can provide insight into where they will go next.

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A major challenge posed by my dissertation project is its focus on territorial control as a causal mechanism linking ethnicity to the diffusion of armed conflict. Without a grasp on where armed groups control territory and when, the project's causal mechanism has limited empirical support. In a working paper, "Modeling Territorial Control in Civil War", I make a serious attempt at measuring this concept which has eluded analysts since the U.S. military's Hamlet Evaluation System. I build on insights from the elegantly applied Hidden Markov Model (HMM) developed by Therese Anders (2020; read about it here), as well as the hybrid GIS approach being worked on by Tao et al. (2016) which you can read about on Mike Findley's website. My latent variable approach relies on existing theories outlining the endogeneity between territorial control and armed conflict. Because varying levels of territorial control make observing certain tactics (i.e., military assaults, one-sided violence, etc.) more/less likely, territorial control can be inferred based on observed conflict events. The model integrates dynamic trajectories of territorial control which are calculated at high-resolutions across space and time. Numerous sources of uncertainty are explicitly built into the model, allowing future analysis applications of the data to evaluate robustness after non-random error has been considered.

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Job market status: I am looking for an analysis or research position. My substantive expertise is particularly well-suited for the intelligence community, defense, and foreign policy sectors. I am equally open to positions in data science and operations research at organizations whose mission aligns with my substantive domain. I will prioritize offers from organizations willing to provide leadership opportunities, especially on projects which require both subject-matter and methodological expertise.

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