I am a Ph.D candidate in MIT’s Department of Political Science and Security Studies Program and, during 2009-10, a pre-doctoral fellow in the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence at Yale University and Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace. My research interests are in civil war, international security, and ethnic politics. My dissertation studies cohesion and fragmentation in insurgent groups, relying on over a year of field research in India and Indian-administered Kashmir, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka. Other projects examine Pakistani regime instability, pro-state paramilitarism in civil wars, Indian and Pakistani foreign security policy, and the politics of terrorism and insurgency. My primary regional focus is on South Asia.

My work has been published or is forthcoming in Civil Wars, Comparative Political Studies, International Security, Security Studies, the Washington Quarterly, and from the RAND Corporation, among others. This research has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, MIT Center for International Studies, and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies. I have also spent time at RAND and in the offices of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and US Senator Arlen Specter. I am an (extremely) occasional contributor to Foreign Policy and the New America Foundation’s AFPak Channel.