He received his PhD in sociology from Boston College in 2012. His research explores issues of culture and knowledge in recent debates in U.S. politics about detainee abuse, torture, and interrogation policy. He is particularly interested in the social processes by which political communities assign meaning to their own acts of violence and the suffering that it causes. More broadly, his research and teaching interests are in cultural sociology, the sociology of knowledge, social control, state violence, and qualitative methods. His work has appeared in Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociological Forum, Symbolic Interaction, and the Huffington Post.