I am a cultural and political sociologist who uses quantiative and computational methods to understand change over time. I received my Ph.D. in 2021 from Duke University and I am currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. In my research, I explore the sources of stability and change in political preferences and personal culture over the life course and try to make sense of individual inconsistency in opinions and tastes over time. I also refine theories of opinion holding and cultural internalization by focusing on the interaction of human cognition with the “scaffolding” of the social environment and develop approaches to measuring personal cultural change over time with applicability to diverse theoretical problems. I also teach graduate and undergraduate courses in classical theory, research and quantitative methods, and the sociology of religion.
Prior to attending graduate school, I was a journalist in Washington, D.C., where I covered higher education finance and administration for InsideHigherEd.com. I received a Master of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I was a Morehead-Cain Scholar but spent most of my time at The Daily Tar Heel.