PhD Candidate at The University of Maryland College Park

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. My research sits at the intersection of American politics, disability politics, identity, and political behavior. Broadly, I study how disability and lived experience shape political participation, attitudes, and interactions with political institutions, and what the experiences of disabled people can teach us about political behavior more generally.

My dissertation examines political participation among disabled Americans, challenging conventional accounts that characterize disabled people primarily as politically disengaged. My research considers how accessibility, resources, and disability identity shape participation across electoral, unconventional, and administrative forms of political engagement. A related strand of my work examines how the measurement and conceptualization of disability affect the conclusions political scientists draw about disabled populations and political inequality.

Beyond my dissertation, my research examines disability identity, political attitudes, institutional trust, and political participation, including work on autistic adults and the politics of disability disclosure and identification. Across these projects, I am particularly interested in how political institutions structure opportunities for participation and how people whose experiences are often overlooked by conventional theories navigate those institutions.

I am also a researcher at the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement (CDCE) at the University of Maryland, where I contribute to research on voting access, youth political participation, election administration, and democratic engagement. My work has been published in the Handbook of Innovations in Political Psychology and through CDCE, including research on voter access and political attitudes.

I hold a B.A. in Political Science from Hofstra University, where I graduated with high honors, and an M.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland. My research has been supported by fellowships and awards from organizations including the American Political Science Association and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

Across my research, teaching, and public-facing work, I seek to broaden how political science understands participation and political behavior by centering experiences that conventional theories and measures often overlook.