I study the politics of education and the policymaking process to understand civic learning and engagement, political knowledge, and policy implementation in a vibrantly pluralistic United States. I examine how citizens (residents of a community and/or nation-state), political elites, and knowledge producers conceptualize and operationalize civic knowledge and skills and how this informs their conceptions and practices of citizenship. I also use public administration literature to underestand teachers as street-level bureaucrats whose political values and practices shape democratic classrooms.

I use community-engaged research approaches to inform qualitative and quantitative methodologies and seek to understand lived experiences of and policy questions being asked by the public. I have extensive experience designing and implementing in-depth interviews, focus groups, and survey experiments, along with a variety of user experience research methods (card sorting, A/B testing, diary study).

Since 2024, I have been an Assistant Professor of Public and Community Service Studies at Providence College, where I teach PSP 101: Introduction to Service in Democratic Communities, PSP 320: Introduction to Community-Engaged Research, and PSP 321: Advanced Community-Engaged Research, along with a growing Independent Study: The Politics of Education. I mentor students in and outside of the major and participate in the Civics Collective on campus.