I am a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate of Government at Cornell University. My research agenda broadly interrogates the effects of institutional constraints on political development, specifically as it relates to race and socioeconomic inequality, democratic advancement and backsliding, and education and housing policy. My dissertation focuses on the political development of the American public education financing system in the 19th and 20th centuries. I pose the question, “Why have attempts for equalization in resource allocation and financing across the K-12 public education system failed in the U.S., despite frequent contestation?” I approach my work primarily via qualitative research methods, and I am particularly situated in American Political Development and American Political Economy, though I often find myself drawing from work in Race & Ethnicity Politics and the Comparative Politics subfield. I previously obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies from Rutgers University-New Brunswick.