I am an Assistant Professor in Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Politics and Public Administration. Prior to joining TMU (formerly Ryerson University), I was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Tulane University’s Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) and received my Ph.D. in Government at the University of Texas at Austin. My research and teaching focus on charismatic leadership, political identity and behavior, political movements and parties, democracy, and research methods, with a regional emphasis on Latin America.

My book, The Emergence and Revival of Charismatic Movements: Argentine Peronism and Venezuelan Chavismo (2021, Cambridge University Press), received the 2022 APSA Leon Epstein Award for the best book on political organizations and parties and the 2022 LASA Social Sciences Award for the best book by the Southern Cone Studies Section. The book investigates how movements founded by charismatic leaders can persist and reemerge as powerful political forces by sustaining their original personalistic core rather than transforming into routinized parties.

I have also published articles in academic journals including Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Democratization, Political Research Quarterly, and Journal of Politics in Latin America. My research has been generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and P.E.O. International Women’s Organization.