He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from Stanford University and was a Post-Doctoral Academy Fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Former Soviet Union, and is currently overseeing a number of research projects looking at how individuals living in conditions of acute insecurity respond to survey questions about their behavior. His work has appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Research and Politics, and the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology. His book Warlords and Coalition Politics in Post-Soviet States is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.