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). I have also conducted research on the political economy of development and social policy in cross-national perspective. For more detail, please see my CV.

Updates

• 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." 
• Working paper reporting results of my most recent community-engaged experimental study of youth political participation in Zambia here (under review).
• Working paper analyzing documents in my forthcoming archive of African Catholic Church documents here.
• 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.
• Elected to serve as At-Large CAHSS representative on Faculty Senate in 2022-2023; helping to lead the Financial Planning Committee's Pay Adequacy and Equity Committee. (CAHSS faculty and staff: Please contact me with any issues that you'd like me to raise!)
• Recipient of the Dean's Award for Interdisciplinary Studies (2022-2023)

For details on other ongoing research, please see CV.  

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.