Liberal and Democratic Theory. History of Political Thought.

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research combines European social, economic and political theory with the history of the social science disciplines, focusing on the Italian tradition and its reception in the development of Anglo-American political science. In particular, I study figures in the realist and empirical traditions of democratic theory, including Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Mosca, Pareto, Michels, Schumpeter, Dahl, and Przeworski. 

My book manuscript, provisionally titled Democratic Elitism: The Secret History of American Political Science, tells the story of how American Political Science was shaped by a fundamental misreading of Italian democratic theorists Mosca, Pareto, and Michels — a misreading with far-ranging consequences for all social science research. The dissertation on which this manuscript is based received the Saller Prize for Best Dissertation in the Division of the Social Sciences. 

I am the co-editor of Florentine Political Writings from Petrarch to Machiavelli (University of Pennsylvania, 2019), a volume containing my own translations of Francesco Guicciardini’s political treatises. My work has appeared in European Journal of Political Theory, Journal of Politics, Critical Review, and Perspectives on Politics.

I earned my PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2020. I also hold an MA in the Social Sciences  from the University of Chicago and a BA (summa cum laude) in History and Political Science (honors) from the University of Pennsylvania.