I am an Assistant Professor in International Politics at Newcastle University. Starting in August 2026, I will be an Assistant Professor in Global Politics at University College London. Previously, I taught at Florida State University, held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the Harvard Kennedy School, was the Managing Editor of Security Studies, and earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University.

Before entering academia, I worked as a career diplomat in Brazil. In this position, I experienced first-hand the search for international status: like other emerging powers, Brazil then strove to be recognized as an equal by the great powers. But while a growing scholarly consensus indicates that the search for status motivates foreign policy and may even cause wars, we still understand little about how countries achieve status or how status motivates foreign policy behavior. My work engages these crucial debates by drawing from interdisciplinary research and using a multi-method approach.