Research 

"Combatants and Communities: Security Orders during Civil War" (job market paper)

"The Innovator's Curse: First Adopters, Systemic War, and Total Defeat," draft here.

In collaboration with Dr. Nicholas Sambanis at Yale University and Dr. Andrew Fialka at Middle Tennessee State University, I led a large-scale data collection project to catalogue violent events during the American Civil War. The project emerged out of pilot data collection I conducted in the summer of 2022 as part of my dissertation, which produced an original dataset of violence in Tennessee and Kentucky and provides the empirical focus of my dissertation and book project.  

From 2023-2025, I managed an expansion of the project to collect data for all secessionist and Border States. This inter-disciplinary project drew from a diverse array of archival data, including resources from the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, The Compendium of the War of the Rebellion,  Geographic Commands correspondence held in Record Group 393 at the National Archives; wartime governor papers held in state archives; proceedings of military court-martials from Record Group 153 in the National Archives; contemporary newspaper reporting; personal correspondence; and county histories. Our research team includes research assistants with a background in history and political science and over the course of the project I have managed over 30 research assistants. 

Our unique data, when combined with high quality data on presence of military forces, census data, and electoral data allows us to approach an array of questions debated in the literature on order, territorial control, identity, and patterns of wartime violence. 

A New Nation: Identity, Political  Community, and Violent Mobilization in the American Civil War, with Nicholas Sambanis and Andrew Fialka

With Middling Power Comes Irresponsibility? Middle Power Interventions in Intrastate Conflict

Force Employment and Decisive Battle 

The Holy Roman Empire and European State Formation, with Nicolás  Idrobo

I outline my current research program, here.