Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in Political Theory at Cornell University. My research investigates strategies of democratic action under imperial political orders, with an area focus on twentieth-century American political thought.

My dissertation, The Right to the World: American Democracy and Anti-Imperial Strategy, uses a historically-situated approach to investigate how twentieth-century civil rights and liberties activists used domestic institutions strategically to challenge American military and economic primacy. Focusing on the period between the U.S.’s entry into World War I in 1917 and the end of the Civil Rights Movement, I argue that movements and institutions commonly viewed as exemplars of liberal progress – the ACLU, the NAACP, the CIO, and the Civil Rights Movement – were actually rich sites of political contestation over the future of American empire.

In 2024-2025, I was an APSA Public Scholarship Fellow. My work has been supported by APSA, the Cornell American Studies Program, the Cornell Society for the Humanities, and McGill University's Yan P. Lin Centre.

Prior to Cornell, I received a B.A. (Honours) and M.A. in Political Science from McGill University. In 2025, I was an IvyPlus Exchange Scholar at Columbia University. You can find my CV here.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about my work, applying to graduate school, or anything else. You can contact me at en256@cornell.edu.