Welcome! I am the incoming Einstein-Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. In fall 2027, I will start as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina.

My research interests are in comparative politics and political behavior, with a focus on civil society, democracy, and political communication. My dissertation book project, How Civic Consciousness Shapes Democratic Resilience, examines civic participation, demonstrating how and why civil society can encourage individuals to depolarize and reject democratic erosion. Drawing on observational and experimental evidence alongside extensive qualitative fieldwork, I show how informal and apolitical civic life maintains critical latent social capital, and how the process of autocratization activates these resources in support of democracy. While my primary focus is on post-communist democracies in East Central Europe, my work also draws comparisons with cases of democratic backsliding globally.

‍My work has been published or accepted for publication in the American Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Government & Opposition, and an edited volume from Cambridge University Press, and has been generously supported by the US Departments of State and Education, APSA Centennial Center, and American Councils, among others. My dissertation was also awarded the 2025 Kahin Prize in International Relations by the Cornell Department of Government for the “most promising dissertation on foreign politics.'' 

I am a co-founder and convener of the monthly online workshop and research community Scholars Working on East European Politics, and remain an affiliate of the Cornell Center on Democracy. At Cornell, I was a graduate fellow at the Institute for European Studies and Center for the Social Sciences, as well as a graduate research assistant for the Russian Election Study.

I hold a PhD in Government from Cornell University, an AM in Russian, East European, and Central Asian studies from Harvard University and a BA in History and Political Science with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In Spring 2024, I was a Junior Visiting Scholar and Brettschneider Exchange Student at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. From Fall 2024-2025 I was a visiting researcher at Uniwersytet SWPS (Warszawa), in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Polish National Election Study. 

A copy of my CV can be found here.

Please feel free to contact me at kfc45 [at] cornell [dot] edu.