I am an Associate Professor of Politics & Global Studies at the University of Virginia, and a fellow at the Governance and Local Development Institute. I specialize in comparative politics and political economy of development, with a regional focus on South Asia. My research explores local citizen-state relations, participation, and accountability. I am interested in how citizens make demands for welfare, security, and justice, and in public officials' capacity and willingness to respond. I am currently engaged in work on the comparative politics of claim-making, on citizen media and digital technology, and on bureaucratic responsiveness in domains ranging from social welfare to policing.

My first book, Claiming the State: Active Citizenship & Social Welfare in India (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was awarded the 2018 Joseph W. Elder Prize by the American Institute for Indian Studies. I extend this research beyond the Indian context in Claim-Making in Comparative Perspective: Everyday Citizenship Practice and its Consequences (Cambridge Elements in the Politics of Development, 2024; with Janice Gallagher and Whitney Taylor). My work appears in the journals Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Economic & Political Weekly, Perspectives on Politics, Science, World Development, and World Politics (for which I was awarded the 2019 Luebbert Prize), and has been supported by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the World Bank Sexual Violence Research Initiative, the MIT GOV/LAB, the Tech and Public Policy Program of the McCourt School of Public Policy (Georgetown University), the American Institute for Indian Studies, the National Science Foundation, the Boren Fellowship, and the Fulbright Program.

My CV can be found here.

Prior to joining University of Virginia, I was an Assistant Professor at Boston College, and an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. I received my PhD in Political Science and my Masters in International Development Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College.