I'm an assistant professor of Political Science with a below-the-line appointment in Berkeley's Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies (formerly Classics). I was born in the UK to an English father and Chilean mother, grew up in Manchester, and have worked in Malaysia and China as well as the UK and US. I hold a B.A. in Modern History and English Literature (2002) from Oxford, an M.Phil. in Political Theory and Intellectual History (2005) from Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in Political Theory (2013) from Harvard. Since 2013, I've held positions at Harvard (Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows), Stanford (visiting research fellow) and Yale (visiting lecturer and then assistant professor). In 2017, I gave birth to a wonderful daughter, and in 2019, joined UC Berkeley.
Over the past decade, I've published in various edited volumes and journals including Political Theory, History of Political Thought, the Journal of Political Philosophy, Polis: The Journal of Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, the Journal of Politics, Classical Quarterly, and Classical Philology. I am the assistant editor at History of Political Thought, an associate editor at Polis and on the editorial advisory board of the new Journal of Sortition.
A lot of my work compares, contrasts, and historicizes ancient and modern conceptualizations of key political ideas and practices, including democracy, deliberation, representation, crowd power, sovereignty and government. My first book, Demos: How the People Ruled Athens, will be published in 2026 by Princeton University Press.