Welcome. I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver. My primary research interests concern religion and politics in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the role of Christianities in Southern and Eastern African politics. My book manuscript, Deus ex Machina? The Politics of New Religious Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa, offers new theory to explain why Pentecostal Christianity has emerged as a highly politicized identity in some sub-Saharan states in recent decades but not others. I test this theory using both cross and sub-national data, which includes qualitative and quantitative databases that I compiled in Zambia (2011-2017).

Other research interests, focused primarily on Africcan contexts, include youth political participation, the impact of religious and non-religious civic education programs on youth political participation, Catholic Bishops' political advocacy across countries and over time, the political economy of development, and social policy in cross-national perspective. 

Updates

• Working Paper : Delivering Democracy? Comparing Catholic Bishops’ Public Advocacy for Democracy in Malawi and Zambia, 1987-2022 (R&R, revision under review).
• Working Paper: Main findings from a recent community-engaged experimental study of youth political participation in Zambia (R&R, revision under review).
• Publication in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Feb., 2023): “Comparing the Religious and Political Orientations of Renewalist Christians Across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa." 
• Publication in Political Behavior (May, 2022): "Increasing Youth Political Engagement with Efficacy Not Obligation: Evidence from a Workshop-Based Experiment in Zambia." Political behavior (2022): 1-26.
• Recipient of the Dean's Award for Interdisciplinary Studies (2022-2023), University of Denver  

PhD, MPh, MA, Columbia University (2016)

• Recipient of Doria Award

BA, Brown University (2006)

• Highest Honors, recipient of Ida B. Wells Award

Lusaka, Zambia, 2013. Research assistant, Mr. Lungu, helps construct databases from government records. 

Rakai District, Uganda, 2010. Pictured here with research assistants on a predissertation study.

Partisan Evangelical Christian organization campaigns for incumbent Presidential candidate a month before Zambia's controversial 2016 election. Photo credit: Lusaka Times, 7/27/16.