Her research deals with new weapons and the creation of laws and norms of war; sanctions and arms embargoes; and the conventional arms trade. Her book, Dangerous Trade: Conventional Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation, explains states’ commitment to and compliance with arms export criteria articulated in the UN Arms Trade Treaty and related multilateral initiatives. She has previously been a Nuclear Security Faculty Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University; a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College; and a research fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and the Wissenchaftszentrum in Berlin. She received her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University.