About

I am an Assistant Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, affiliated with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. I received my PhD from Princeton’s Department of Politics. I have also been affiliated with Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs as a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow, and with Brandeis’ Crown Center for Middle East Studies as a Faculty Leave Fellow.

My research examines how everyday people can transform the worlds in which they live. Much of my work focuses on revolutions — or movements seeking to overthrow an established regime and found a new political order. I examine why revolutionary movements break out, why some struggle and why some succeed, and why some are able to establish lasting change. I also study an array of related political phenomenon like unarmed protest, armed rebellion, authoritarianism, and democratization. Much of my research is grounded in the Middle East and North Africa.

My first book, Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed, was published by Cambridge University Press in their Studies in Comparative Politics Series. It explains why some revolutionary governments are rapidly toppled by counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable and long-lasting regimes. I analyze Egypt's 2011 revolution and 2013 counterrevolution, using a combination of interview and protest data, and I compare Egypt's trajectory to those of other revolutionary regimes with an original dataset of counterrevolutions since 1900. The project was generously supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

My academic articles have been published in a number of forums including American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Peace Research, and Comparative Politics. I have also written about my research for various news and longform outlets, including The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Dissent.

I have a number of new and ongoing research projects on revolution, protest, and authoritarianism. I am working on a book examining the 2019 wave of Arab uprisings in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Algeria, which will be co-authored with Chantal Berman and Rima Majed. I am also studying the unique dynamics of autocracies born of violent rebellion, with Anne Meng and Jack Paine, as part of a broader book project on the different origins of authoritarian regimes. And I am beginning work on a new book project on democratic revolutions, which will explore the differences between democracies founded by mass uprisings versus those established by political elites.