How do abstract ideals like democracy, accountability, and objectivity become instantiated in concrete actions? And what role do civic organizations play in shaping how we collectively imagine and pursue positive social change?
Drawing insights from economic and organizational sociology, my research combines historical, qualitative, and quantitative methods to understand how organizations draw lines of inclusion and exclusion and allocate the privileges of voice and influence. By understanding how normative commitments manifest in seemingly mundane administrative settings, my research illuminates the often overlooked ways civic organizations construct the meaning of public participation and structure the possibilities for a democratic society.
Along these lines, I’ve published on a range of topics including:
the role of philanthropists, academic elites, and early think tanks in transforming the meaning of democratic citizenship in the early 1900s (and the legacy of this transformation in today’s politics);
the fraught interplay between modes of capitalist accumulation and modes of philanthropic redistribution in a democratic society;
the transformation of nonprofit accountability since the early 2000s and how rigorous impact evaluations threatened to undermine the very activities they purported to assess;
how civic engagement can, at times, breed political inaction;
how, during the early days of COVID-19, civic organizations mobilized as vital nodes in a patchwork public health infrastructure.
My work has received support from the National Science Foundation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. For more, see Writings (where you’ll find PDFs of my published pieces), Press (where you’ll find media coverage of my work), and Projects (where you’ll find info on my ongoing research efforts).
Originally from Virginia, I now reside in Oakland, California. I received my undergraduate degree from Princeton University after which I spent several years working in public policy, first at Mathematica Policy Research and then at the Urban Institute. Prior to academic life, I worked as a bike mechanic, thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, and occasionally helped organize punk shows in DC. I’m a beer geek, vegetarian, hobbyist coffee roaster, rock climber, tolerable guitarist, woodworker, and formerly half-decent competitive cyclist.
