I am primarily interested in the question of how power and its exercise - especially in the form of force - are justified or legitimized. In Political Science, this has led me to study civil-military relations, military organizations, laws/norms of armed conflict, and more recently militarism and policing. In more literary and philosophical fields it led me to the study of mythologies, heroic epic, and concepts of virtue, nobility, responsibility, and criminality.
As an undergraduate at Duke University, I studied History and Linguistics as well as Political Science, focusing on the Medieval and early modern periods and on Germanic languages including Middle High German and Old Norse. I studied abroad at University College, Cork, in Ireland, where I did a concentrated course on Celtic Civilization, taking classes in History, Archaeology, Heroic Literature, and Irish language.
As a graduate student at Duke, I did about a third of my coursework in the law school, focusing on philosophy of law, responsibility, and punishment, EU law, International Humanitarian Law, and comparative constitutional design. I spent several years abroad, primarily in Germany at universities and research institutes in Erlangen, Goettingen, and Berlin. My dissertation research also took me to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands for extended stays. I spent my final year of dissertation writing at Harvard University on a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, and then had the opportunity to do Columbia University's Summer Workshop on Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS) at Cornell in the summer of 2007.
In fall of 2007 I returned to Germany for the first half of a post-doctoral fellowship from the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. I spent the second half of that two-year fellowship at the Center for Transatlantic Relations (Johns Hopkins, SAIS) in Washington, DC. I started my appointment at UNI in Fall of 2009. In 2013 I was awarded an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations, which allowed me to spend one year working in the Pentagon. In 2014, I accepted a faculty appointment at the U.S. Naval War College, where I currently work in the National Security Affairs Department.
At Duke, I also worked as a writing tutor and led a poetry writing workshop for undergraduates.
I am forever grateful to the wonderful professors I had at Duke, especially Robert O. Keohane, Ole R. Holsti, Michael Gillespie, Ruth Grant, Hein Goemans, Don Horowitz, and many others. Special thanks go to my endlessly patient and helpful dissertation committee, who continue to support and advise me: Peter Feaver, David Soskice, Chris Gelpi, Alex Downes, and Tim Buethe.
Outside of academia, I have been dancing Argentine Tango since 1997/8 and teaching dance since 2004. I am an avid beach volleyball player, cross-country skier, backpacker, kayaker, and rock climber.
