I write and teach in the areas of political theory and the history of political thought, with particular interests in the histories of human rights and humanitarianism. I am currently University Assistant Professor in the History of Modern Political Thought at the University of Cambridge and an Official Fellow of Emmanuel College. From 2017 to 2019 I was a Junior Research Fellow at Emmanuel. Before coming to Cambridge I completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Chicago.

My current work is focused on the politics of what I describe as human rights promises. My current book projects trace the contested legacies of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in mid-twentieth century debates about race and empire. The first focuses on debates over the meaning of the American founding and the nature of American ‘hypocrisy’ in debates over race and rights in the mid-twentieth century US. The second looks at struggles from the 1940s through the 1960s over French imperialism in Algeria, and the relationship between decolonisation, self-determination, and human rights. My work has been published in Political Theory and Humanity, and in the volumes Time, History, and Political Thought (CUP 2023), The Blackwell Companion to Arthur Danto (Wiley Blackwell 2022), and Contingency in the Course of International Law (OUP 2021), and is forthcoming in Volume 5: The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries of The Cambridge World History of Rights (CUP).

At Cambridge, I teach on the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. At Emmanuel, I am regularly the Director of Studies for students in the History and Politics joint Tripos as well as, for the history side, the History and Modern Languages joint Tripos and serve as a Tutor.

Before graduate school, I worked in political communications and social policy research in Washington, DC, and New York City. I grew up in Brooklyn and also hold an AB in Social Studies from Harvard.

You can reach me at em724[at]cam.ac.uk.