My goal as a professor is for my students to become agile and independent thinkers who exercise intellectual rigor, analytical acumen, and strong communication skills. In my teaching, I aim to bring each student forward from wherever they are and give them agency over their own learning process. I develop my students’ ability to assess scholarship through critical engagement with theory and methods, as well as with key epistemological questions surrounding knowledge production, providing them with an “analytical toolkit” applicable beyond the subject of study. My courses seek to develop metacognitive skills, an ability to think critically about one’s own thinking, and I actively discourage any inclination toward dogmatism. To reinforce critical learning as a practice, I try to nurture intrinsic motivations for learning by connecting course material to my students’ own lives: what they care about and who they understand themselves to be.

In addition to teaching, at Swarthmore I serve as faculty adviser for the College’s three-year partnership with the Pulitzer Center, which engages students, faculty, and staff on critical local and global issues.

I am a member of the faculty committee for the Peace and Conflict Studies Department and for several years served on Swarthmore College’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).

I am a dedicated faculty mentor in the Richard Rubin Scholar Mentoring Program, which seeks to advance the academic, interpersonal, social, and professional success of underrepresented and first generation students at the College.

Courses Taught

Swarthmore College

• Introduction to International Relations (F2016, S2019, F2020, S2022, S2023, F2023)

• African Politics (S2017, F2017, S2019, S2021, F2021)

• Wartime Humanitarian Action (honors seminar) (S2018, F2018, S2021, F2021, F2022)

• The Politics and Practice of Humanitarianism (S2017, F2017)

• Civil Wars (S2022, F2022)

• Ethics and International Relations (S2023)

University of Oxford - Undergraduate

• International Relations Core Course (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014)

• International Relations of the Cold War (2011, 2013, 2014)

• International Relations of the Inter-War Period (2011, 2012, 2013)

University of Oxford - Graduate

• The Politics and Practice of Humanitarianism, seminar co-convened with Alexander Betts, Blavatnik School of Government (2012, 2013, 2014)

• Violence and Historical Memory in Central Africa, St Antony’s College (2009)

Rift Valley Institute

• Deputy Director, “Great Lakes Course,” held in the region (2009–2014)