My research addresses questions on agenda setting and policy adoption on gender justice issues. My dissertation The End of the Child Bride: Social Movements and State Policymaking on Underage Marriage received the 2023 Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association State Politics and Policy section.
In my current book project Minor Politics, I investigate the issue of underage marriage policy in the United States, asking how this issue went from relative obscurity to the agendas of a majority of state legislatures in the span of five years. Only in the last five years have state legislatures begun to address the continued loopholes that allow children, mainly girls, to marry as minors. This shift has happened in the absence of high public salience or well-resourced lobby groups.
Other working projects include an analysis of the ability of social movement actors to advocate in state legislatures against anti-transgender legislation and a cross-country analysis of the impact of feminist movements on women's economic empowerment.