About Me

I was born in Washington, D.C., but I grew up in Prince George’s County, in the great state of Maryland. I began my undergraduate studies in Russian at UMBC before receiving my B.A. in Political Science from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. I then went on to complete a terminal M.A. with the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago.

With a focus on political theory and Russian intellectual and literary history, I earned a dual Ph.D. in Political Science and Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago in 2023. As a graduate student, I traveled to Vladivostok, St. Petersburg, and Moscow for language study, archival research, and an internship at the independent literary publishing house Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (NLO), respectively.  I also adopted a beloved cat, Duo (pictured right), from Far East Russia.

Before accepting my current position in Brown University’s Department of Slavic Studies, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University and taught modern political theory in the Department of Politics. My articles and reviews have been published in Slavic Review, Ab Imperio, and the Journal of Russian American Studies.