My main research agenda concerns the basic determinants of institutional design and specifically the question of where individuals decide to locate sites of political agency. Individuals sometimes solve similar cooperation problems with wildly divergent institutional designs, from diffuse concert systems to direct unification.

My research approaches this broad question from a variety of different angles. I draw on a wide range of theoretical traditions alongside cutting edge scientific research in human cooperation to show that increased institutionalization is a response to shared interests under conditions of generalized pessimism and conflict.

My work, particularly with the MESO lab at Ohio State, concerns the complex relationship between international order and conflict. Powerful states frequently build orders as responses to major wars, and they are particularly attractive to prospective members when concern about conflict is high. But at the same time, patterns of conflict and cooperation are affected by the presence of order.

Because these variables are mutually causal, innovative methods are necessary to study their relationship, both theoretically and empirically. Our work uses computational modeling and modern quantitative empirical methods to arrive at sound conclusions about order and conflict.

The social world is irreducibly complex, with nuanced interactions between individuals and superordinate structures. Our methods must try to incorporate this complexity to avoid problematic reductionist inferences.

My methodological agenda approaches substantive questions from the perspective of complex systems, with social structures assumed to be emergent outcomes of repeated individual interactions. I use computational agent-based modeling as a core theoretical tool and combine it with mixed-methods research, incorporating text analysis and network modeling alongside historical reading, to carefully identify key mechanisms.