I am currently a PhD candidate in the department of Political Science at the University of California Santa Barbara, preparing to graduate in June, 2009.  I will be joining the faculty of the Political Science Department at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock in the fall of 2009. I study international relations and American politics, with a special interest on the intersection of the two in the topic of American Foreign Policy. 

My research focuses on how religion motivates and influences political action.  In my dissertation, I look at the influence of religion on foreign policy through a multi-method approach.   I am particularly interested in what I call “providential beliefs”, a special category of religious beliefs composed of adherents who believe both that God has a plan and that they have a role to play in bringing it about. The major hypothesis I test in my research is that providential believers will be willing to take more and greater personal and political risks in the pursuit of what they believe to be God’s will, compared to non-providential believers.

The concept of providential beliefs is applicable to a number of topics in political science. I am currently working on a project that examines the providential nature of the beliefs that motivate suicide terrorists, and also recently contributed a book chapter on religiously-motivated political violence in Iraq to an edited volume on the conflict to be published by Ashgate in the coming year.

Since the process by which providential beliefs motivate political action is in part dependent on salient and convincing frames, my research also dips into the topic of framing. I am currently working with Amber Boydstun of the University of California Davis on a project to examine media and presidential frames of the war on terror. The use of religious rhetoric to discuss the war on terror is also of interest to me.

Please feel free to click around and make yourself at home. There is mostly academic information here, but you may run into a few travel photos and some family news as well.

Thanks for visiting!