One major area of my work examines the role of civil society participation in climate change politics. My first book based on this research, titled Networks in Contention: The Divisive Politics of Global Climate Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in March 2015. I ask, first, how civil society organizations make decisions about what forms of collective action they will use to try to influence their targets, and second, what consequences their decisions have for climate change policy-making. This book received the 2015 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association's Political Networks Section, the 2016 Levine Prize for Best Book in Comparative Administration and Public Policy from the International Political Science Association, the 2016 Don K. Price Award for the Best Book in Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics from the American Political Science Association, and the 2016 Lynton Keith Caldwell Award for Best Book in Environmental Politics and Policy in the past three years from the American Political Science Association (co-recipient). Related work has been published in Global Environmental Politics, Environmental Politics, and in the British Journal of Political Science. A Methods Appendix describing the data collection and analysis for this piece can be found here.
I also conduct research concerning the politics of sustainable development. This work (co-authored with Lucia Seybert) employs content analysis of state speeches to empirically identify fault lines in international debates about the norm of sustainable development. The project codebook can be found here. I have also examined the politics of decarbonization in the oil and gas sector (with Jessica Green, Thomas Hale, and Paasha Mahdavi). Work from this project has been published in Review of International Political Economy and Global Environmental Politics. Additionally, I have a longstanding interest in transnational social movements and non-governmental organizations. I have previously conducted research on the politics of the global justice movement in the United States and Europe with Sidney Tarrow, as well as the American and transnational dimensions of peace activism.
Currently, I am working on two research projects. The first is a forthcoming book project (co-authored with Sarah Bush) that examines the creation and mission content of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) based in the United States. Despite INGOs' practical and theoretical importance, scholars have given little systematic attention to when INGOs are founded and the purposes for which INGOs are created. This project combines theory from multiple disciplines to enhance knowledge of organizational creation, examining INGOs over time and across different sectors, including democracy promotion, environmental conservation, global health, and humanitarian relief. This work is support by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Related work has been published in Environmental Politics and International Studies Quarterly.
I am also working on a project concerning the social reception of new energy projects globally. Promoting access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy -- especially in critical regions of South Asia and Africa -- is an important foreign policy priority of the United States. Despite the scale of unmet demand, social protest and contestation have become a barrier to project realization in many communities. Yet the origins and impact of such contention are poorly understood. This project advances scholarly knowledge by contributing to the comparative politics of infrastructure siting and social protest. It offers three main advances. First, it pioneers a method for the global comparative study of protest events, demonstrating how traditional and social media records can be leveraged to gather reliable data about social contestation. Second, it combines original data on protest with existing data on proposed coal and wind projects all over the world, developing insight into how the politics of project siting may differ in the developed and developing world. Third, it offers a multi-faceted treatment of how protest affects outcomes, including consideration of the potential for protest to impact both project and community-level outcomes. The project employs a multi-method approach to data collection and analysis that includes statistical methods, focus group discussions, and qualitative case studies. This works is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
I also conduct research concerning the politics of sustainable development. This work (co-authored with Lucia Seybert) employs content analysis of state speeches to empirically identify fault lines in international debates about the norm of sustainable development. The project codebook can be found here. I have also examined the politics of decarbonization in the oil and gas sector (with Jessica Green, Thomas Hale, and Paasha Mahdavi). Work from this project has been published in Review of International Political Economy and Global Environmental Politics. Additionally, I have a longstanding interest in transnational social movements and non-governmental organizations. I have previously conducted research on the politics of the global justice movement in the United States and Europe with Sidney Tarrow, as well as the American and transnational dimensions of peace activism.
Currently, I am working on two research projects. The first is a forthcoming book project (co-authored with Sarah Bush) that examines the creation and mission content of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) based in the United States. Despite INGOs' practical and theoretical importance, scholars have given little systematic attention to when INGOs are founded and the purposes for which INGOs are created. This project combines theory from multiple disciplines to enhance knowledge of organizational creation, examining INGOs over time and across different sectors, including democracy promotion, environmental conservation, global health, and humanitarian relief. This work is support by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Related work has been published in Environmental Politics and International Studies Quarterly.
I am also working on a project concerning the social reception of new energy projects globally. Promoting access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy -- especially in critical regions of South Asia and Africa -- is an important foreign policy priority of the United States. Despite the scale of unmet demand, social protest and contestation have become a barrier to project realization in many communities. Yet the origins and impact of such contention are poorly understood. This project advances scholarly knowledge by contributing to the comparative politics of infrastructure siting and social protest. It offers three main advances. First, it pioneers a method for the global comparative study of protest events, demonstrating how traditional and social media records can be leveraged to gather reliable data about social contestation. Second, it combines original data on protest with existing data on proposed coal and wind projects all over the world, developing insight into how the politics of project siting may differ in the developed and developing world. Third, it offers a multi-faceted treatment of how protest affects outcomes, including consideration of the potential for protest to impact both project and community-level outcomes. The project employs a multi-method approach to data collection and analysis that includes statistical methods, focus group discussions, and qualitative case studies. This works is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.