I am a Professor of Government at William & Mary where I also serve as the Director of the Digital Inclusion & Governance Lab (DIGLab) and the Director of the Africa Research Center (ARC).

My research and teaching focus on the political economy of development, comparative politics, and African politics, with wide-ranging interests on: the effects of the digital technology revolution; agriculture, trade, and comparative political development; the causes of civil war; ethnic politics; and foreign aid.

My research program on digital technology, housed at W&M’s DIGLab, leverages field experiments and other methods to better understand the impact of digital tools and platforms on economic development and individual livelihoods—from the effects of voice-based generative AI on consequential decision-making, to effective strategies for reducing the digital gender gap, to overcoming coordination problems in the transition from cash to digital payments.

A second ongoing research program examines the long-run effects of the commercialization of export agriculture on economic, social, and political development across Africa. This work is culminating in a forthcoming book, The Seeds of Change: The Cash Crop Revolution, Colonialism, and the Making of Modern Africa, co-authored with Yannick Pengl.

My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Innovations for Poverty Action, the Gates Foundation, the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) WEE-DiFine and WEE-Connect Initiatives, the British Academy, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute of International Education, the United States Agency for International Development and the United States Department of Agriculture, and been published in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Nature, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Journal of Politics, International Organization, World Politics, and other outlets. I have also authored two books on the causes of civil war: Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap (Cambridge University Press 2016) and Why Comrades Go To War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict, co-authored with Harry Verhoeven. (For book overview and highlights.)

Notes on header images: 1.) photo of members of the Sudan Liberation Army in North Darfur, Sudan that I took during my field research in 2005; 2.) participants meeting in the hills of Blantyre in Malawi as part of the Livelihoods of Women Program (LWP) , which DIGLab organized with GENET and IPOR to increase women’s smartphone ownership and digital literacy; 3.) participants in LWP using their new smartphones; 4.) section of a visualization produced by my co-author, Yannick Pengl, showing the geographic concentration of colonial cash crop agriculture, mining, and nighttime lights.