Welcome! I am a Professor of Political Science, Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and Director of the Workplace Justice Lab @ Northwestern University. 

My research interests include American political economy and American political development, with a focus on labor politics and policy, organizing and collective action, parties and groups, the presidency, and multi-method research. With my colleagues at the Workplace Justice Lab, I study wage theft and work with worker organizations and labor standards enforcement agencies to create more effective and equitable policy enforcement.

My new book, Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights (2024), examines the changing nature of workers’ rights over the last half-century and the political development of alt-labor groups (nonunion, nonprofit forms of worker organization), which are supporting and organizing predominantly low-wage immigrant workers and workers of color in their fight for their rights in the political and economic arenas. Related articles and blog posts about the book can be found here, here, and here, and here is an interview I gave about the book in January 2025.

I am also the author of Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, co-editor of Rethinking Political Institutions: the Art of the State, and have published numerous journal articles and book chapters on the presidency, political parties, American political development, institutional change, and qualitative and multi-method research. I have also published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Prospect, and my research has been featured in outlets including The Atlantic, Vox, Politico, The Nation, PBS News, NPR, NBC News, CNBC, CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, and the award-winning Daily Northwestern.

I teach a variety of courses on American government and politics. My teaching was kindly recognized with the E. LeRoy Hall Award for Excellence in Teaching (Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences) and the R. Barry Farrell Teaching Award (Department of Political Science), and I was twice elected by the Northwestern student body to the Faculty Honor Roll.

I am the chair of IPR’s Policy Discourse and Decision Making program and am currently the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Political Science department. I am also affiliated with the Comparative-Historical Social Science program and the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern. With Chloe Thurston, I co-edit the Penn Press series American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law. With Deva Woodly, Hahrie Han, and Ray Block Jr., I co-coordinate the Organizing Forum. 

Other details are available on my CV or by contacting me!