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Welcome!  I am an Assistant Professor in Politics at Bates College.  I received my PhD in Political Science from MIT in 2026.  

I study comparative and American political economy, social policy, crisis governance, public administration, and institutional change in the advanced industrialized democracies.  

My book project—The Liberal Welfare State in Crisis: Risk, Relief, and State Capacity—examines a paradox of governance in liberal market economies:  states that maintain comparatively limited social protections in ordinary times often intervene extraordinarily when collective crises—such as pandemics, financial crises, and recurrent natural disasters—strike.  I examine how inherited institutions shape these emergency responses and why temporary infusions of money, political attention, and administrative activity so often fail to convert into durable institutional change in the social safety net.  

My broader research agenda examines the politics of collective risk and social protection over the long term, including disaster relief within fiscal federalism and variation in subnational crisis governance.

My work has been supported by the NSF/APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Scholarship, the Consortium on the American Political Economy, the Oxford Global Priorities Institute, and an MIT Presidential Graduate Fellowship.  I have received APSA Section Prizes in American Political Economy and State Politics & Policy, as well as the NEPSA Robert C. Wood Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper.

I hold an AB in History of Art and Architecture summa cum laude from Harvard and a Master of City Planning degree from MIT.  I grew up in the Bay Area, Vancouver, and Seoul.  I am mom to my American bully Luna.