Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where I study American politics with an emphasis on political behavior. My research interests include voting behavior, polarization, Congressional representation, and political parties. Specifically, I am interested in how electoral institutions impact the representativeness of elected officials, and the mechanisms that underlie these outcomes. To this end, my dissertation examines voter knowledge and voting behavior in direct primaries in the United States, in order to understand how nomination systems impact the broader democratic context in which they exist. I received my Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College, where I studied Philosophy and Government & Legal Studies.