I joined the Department of Political Science with a joint appointment in the Women and Gender Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis in September 2005. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in February 2005. My dissertation, entitled Politicizing Representation: Campaigns for Candidate Gender Quotas Worldwide, developed a framework for analyzing the adoption and implementation of quotas for the selection of female candidates to political office. It received an Honorable Mention from the American Political Science Association for the Best Dissertation on Women and Politics in 2006.

My book, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide, will be published in early 2009 by Oxford University Press. I am also co-editor with Sarah Childs of Women, Gender, and Politics: A Reader, forthcoming with Oxford University Press, and co-convenor with Fiona Mackay of the Feminism and Institutionalism International Network. My current research explores the global diffusion of gender quotas, the normative dimensions of quota reform, and the broader significance of quota policies to existing political processes, including links between the descriptive and substantive representation of women.

In 2008-2009, I will be a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a non-residential Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Prior to coming to Washington University, I was a British Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol (2004-2005). I have also been a visiting researcher at the University of Stockholm (2001-2002), the University of Helsinki (1997-1998), the Autonomous University of Madrid (1995-1996), and the University of Oslo (1995).