Welcome!

  Welcome to my website. I am the the Jack Miller Center Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. My research centers on passions (or emotions) and their role in moral and political life, especially as they are accounted for in 18th century moral and political theory. I am currently revising a book manuscript, Violent Passions and Liberal Citizenship, which aims to rehabilitate the "violent passions" or those which create psychological disorder, as motives for various liberal duties. 

As a political theorist interested in the history of political thought, my work addresses these questions primarily through exegesis of Scottish Enlightenment and other eighteenth century texts (especially the work of Adam Smith), but I am also broadly interested in relevant empirical research on the role of passions in political life. I have done extensive archival work with rare books and manuscripts from the 18th century, including work on the marginalia in Adam Smith's library at the University of Glasgow, Kirkcaldy Library and Museum, and National Library of Scotland and on historical texts at Humboldt University. In 2017, I will be a short-term fellow at the Huntington Library.