I am a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Management & Governance at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science in 2023 and an MA in Political Science in 2022, both from the University of Washington. I also hold an MA in International Studies from the University of Oklahoma, which I received in 2019. You can read my CV here.

My primary research interests lie at the intersection of culture and political economy, examined from comparative, modern, and historical perspectives. Specifically, I explore how religious institutions and actors interact with politics to shape attitudes, public opinion, and policy at both the individual and institutional levels across various societies and time periods. I employ data scraping techniques to compile an original spatiotemporal dataset with over 300,000 video and audio files of religious sermons in the United States so far. Using this novel dataset and text analysis methods, I investigate the engagement of religious institutions and actors with topics like climate change, abortion, immigration, and other contemporary sociopolitical issues. I also utilize empirical methods like survey data and innovative experimental designs to assess individual behavior and attitudes toward public policies such as climate change and public spending, considering individuals’ ideological convictions and cultural predispositions. Finally, I use historical data and employ quasi-experimental observational methods to study national policies and their impact on cultural and political behavior in post-Ottoman Turkey and the Balkans.

In addition to my research, I have taught comparative politics as an independent instructor. In my capacity as a teaching assistant, I have taught courses on comparative and world politics, political economy, international relations, religion, and research methods at the undergraduate level.