I am a scholar of comparative politics, focusing on the political economy of development. My research examines the relationship between citizens and political officials, with a particular emphasis on accountability in developing countries. I am particularly interested in two related but distinct threads of research: one considers how accountability mechanisms can be perverted or disrupted when states are developing politically or economically; and the other considers the methods and data used to study accountability relationships around the world. To conduct this research, I partner with government institutions, international organizations, and policy makers, as well as other academics. Methodologically, I utilize various tools in my work, including interviews, text analysis, observational data, and experiments (RCTs, lab-in-the-field, conjoint, and behavioral experiments). I obtained my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2014. For the 2014-2015 academic year, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. In 2015, I joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy, Peter Thacher Grauer Scholar, Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Studies, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science. I am also Project Manager of Experiments for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project and a founding Principal Investigator of the Digital Society Project, both cross-national data projects providing publicly available political data. For the 2023-2024 academic year, I am on loan from UNC-CH as a Fellow at the Office of Evaluation Sciences in the General Services Administration of the U.S. Federal Government.