Starting in the fall, I will be a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University. I hold a Ph.D. in political science from Claremont Graduate University, with emphases in international security, comparative politics, and political methodology. My research areas include political violence and militant organizations, informal institutions and political outcomes, democratization, and Middle East politics. I have sole-authored peer-reviewed articles that appear in The Journal of Politics, The Middle East Journal, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Recently, I taught security studies at California State University, San Bernardino. This summer I am working on a research project in Lebanon and honing my Levantine Arabic skills at the American University of Beirut.