I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Before arriving at UAB, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where I worked with Professor H. Clark Barrett on the Geography of Philosophy Project. Prior to that, I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, where I worked with Richard Sosis in the Evolution, Cognition and Culture Lab as well as Richard Wilson at the Human Rights Institute. 

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The central themes in my research are cooperation and conflict, with particular interests in the role of religion and speech in supporting collective violence but also reconciliation during transitional justice. I'm especially interested in discourses that international legal actors, institutions, and advocates use to construe the purported causes of conflict, and how these compare to the relative experiences of communities in living and breathing cultures. To explore these issues, I've conducted ethnographic research in the Balkans with survivors and former combatants of the Yugoslav Wars, and most recently with human rights defenders and investigative journalists in the southernmost Authoritarian Belt of Eastern Europe. 

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I've also collaborated on several projects investigating philosophical topics in cultural anthropology, including cross-cultural perspectives on hate speech, misinformation, lying, knowledge, wisdom, ownership, liability, intentionality, and trust. Other research interests include cultural differences in moral injury, support for human rights, sacred values, and propaganda for war and incitement. I've also participated in postconflict reconciliation efforts between former combatants of the Yugoslav Wars and served as the United States Ambassador for the Human Rights Measurement Initiative.