I am a third year Ph.d student at UNC Chapel Hill studying American Politics and Political Methodology. I graduated in 2003 from Campbell University, a small school in central North Carolina with a degree in government. After spending time working on a variety of political campaigns, I returned to school to pursue my master's degree. I earned an MA in American Politics from Appalachian State University in the Spring of 2007.
My primary research interests are in American institutions, specifically Legislative Politics, and in organized interests. I am also interested in rational choice perspectives for understanding politics and advanced statistical methods. Most of my work thus far has focused on studying the impact of institutions on state legislators' behaviors. Because institutional analysis requires comparisons I find state legislatures particularly useful venues for theory testing. In my dissertation I study legislative behavior using a relatively new tool to political science: social network analysis. New statistical techniques for network analysis allow me to ascertain the impact of certain institutional and environmental factors on cosponsorship behaviors by state legislatures while properly controlling for the dependence in a cosponsorship network.