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I am interested in how social boundaries intertwine with political development and institutional change to facilitate opportunities for exclusion and violence. 

I explore what and whose interests and values are at stake in conflicts over the “right” allocation of rights and rewards in a society. I make substantive and theoretical contributions to the study of ethnoracial boundaries and their connections to institutions and state power. Historical cases allow me to see how different dynamics play out over the long-term and to identify mechanisms that conform to how societies practice exclusion today. In parallel, I conduct more general research on institutions, politics, and social change.

My current and recent work includes investigations of medieval expulsions of Jews from German cities, the early modern diffusion of new ideas about witchcraft and the incidence of witch trials, how organizational leaders build consensus and shared vision for systemic change, and the connections between ethnoracial social structural cleavages, political mobilization, and symbolic boundaries.

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