I am a Research Assistant Professor with the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program in the Department of Philosophy at SUNY Buffalo. I am part of the Diversity, Dynamism, and Inclusion project sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation with amazing colleagues Ryan Muldoon, Justin Bruner, Alex Oprea, and Jake Neiheisel, where I do survey and computational experiments on issues relating to housing, immigration, and civic vibrancy.
Broadly, my work lies at the nexus of democratic theory and political psychology by weaving together empirical, formal, and normative work in political science. My book project regards what I call “affective trust” and draws from behavioral experiments and moral philosophy to argue for a richer understanding of the instantiations of trust in political science. Trust is an organizing phenomenon in society and my work aims to formalize and ground sentimental trust in both analytic theory as well as empirical political science.
I’ve also done work with the Computational Social Philosophy Lab, based at the University of Michigan, where I have published with Patrick Grim, Daniel Singer, and Scott Page, among others. We use elegant computer and analytic models to uncover the dynamics and plausibility of prominent conjectures in social epistemology, philosophy of science, and political philosophy. We’ve written papers on issues such as trust, polarization, and scientific experimentation. Thanks to Scott I have an Erdos Number of five.
Because I also think it important to use our academic resources for the public good, I have served as a consultant on a Democracy Fund project through the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP), where we published a report on the most effective ways philanthropy might strengthen democracy.