Published

1. Paper-Pusher or President’s Guard? State Work and Contentious Action in the Syrian Uprising, Conditionally Accepted, Journal of Peace Research [Preprint]
   Abstract

   How does work for the state shape local protest against authoritarian regimes? Autocrats can manipulate how both repressive and conventional state workers are selected, compensated and surveilled in ways that can strengthen their hold on power. But because autocrats prioritize control of their repressive staff, we should expect employment in the repressive apparatus to more directly undermine protest occurrence. To examine this argument, I pair interviews with state personnel and new data on geolocated security installations with existing data on public employment and Syria’s 2011 protest movement. I show that high levels of public employment were associated with limited protest only in communities near security installations, where employees were more likely to be repressive staff especially unlikely to engage in or support local collective disobedience. Further from installations, high levels of public employment reflected civilian employment and were not associated with limited protest. The results point to a novel channel through which control of the repressive apparatus influences autocratic resilience to mass unrest and motivate further attention to when civilian employment generates compliance.

2. Social Media Narratives across Platforms in Conflict: Evidence from Syria, with Erin Walk, Kiran Garimella, Ahmet Akbiyik, and Fotini Christia. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 87, no. 2 (2025): 449–463. [Preprint|Replication Data and Code]
   Abstract

   How do representations of violent conflict differ across social media platforms? We constructed and analyzed comparable datasets of public messages and images from elite- and meso-level Syrian actors posting on three popular social media platforms. Our findings show that complementary if divergent discussions of violence remain central even amid a period of relative de-escalation. Narratives on Twitter reaching an international audience contextualize violence within the conflict’s master cleavages, while on Telegram, they address a more local audience and emphasize the violence’s day-to-day impacts. A site with stricter surveillance, Facebook features more loyalist narratives. Paired with a sample of users’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire, our results show that users across platforms diversify their presentation of violence to reach domestic and international audiences and to accommodate technical affordances, with consequences for how both audiences and researchers understand ongoing conflict.

3. Empowering women facing gender-based violence amid COVID-19 through media campaigns. Nature Human Behavior, Vol. 7, no. 10 (2023): 1740–1752. [Preprint|Pre-Analysis Plan|Replication Data and Code|JPAL Write-Up|MIT News Write-Up]
   Abstract

   COVID-19 heightened women’s exposure to gender-based and intimate partner violence, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. We tested whether edutainment interventions shown to successfully combat gender-based and intimate partner violence when delivered in person can be effectively delivered using social (WhatsApp and Facebook) and traditional (TV) media. To do so, we randomized the mode of implementation of an intervention conducted by an Egyptian women’s rights organization seeking to support women amid COVID-19 social distancing. We found WhatsApp to be more effective in delivering the intervention than Facebook but no credible evidence of differences across outcomes between social media and TV dissemination. However, the campaign did increase women’s knowledge, hypothetical use, and reported use of available resources.

Working Papers

1. Workplace Networks and Civil Society: Evidence from Jordan. Under Review, Available Upon Request
   Abstract

   Why are some groups of individuals able to develop and sustain autonomous organizations in non-democratic settings? I point to an under-theorized resource: the networks individuals develop working within the autocratic state. By fostering high levels of localized participation and bottom-up collective action, clustered, dense networks can frustrate incumbent attempts to undermine mobilization and organization via top-down manipulation. I field and analyze a networks elicitation survey to formalize how workplace networks differ across otherwise similar state institutions in Jordan. I then draw on qualitative evidence to trace the foundational influence of workplace networks in allowing workers in one sector to sustain organizational autonomy while rendering their peers’ organizations susceptible to co-optation and capture. This research underscores how even highly visible networks can sustain mobilization and organization while pointing to the constraints incumbents face when manipulating the state to entrench their power.

   • APSA Middle East and North Africa Section, Best Paper Award, 2023
   • APSA Education Politics Section, Best Paper Award, 2023
   • APSA Labor Politics Section, A. Philip Randolph Award for Best Graduate Student Award, 2022

2. Correcting Misperceived Gender Norms: Experimental Evidence from Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, with Carolyn Barnett, Alexandra Blackman, and Marwa Shalaby, Under Review, Available Upon Request

3. Badu Al Wasta: Tribal Identity and Local Voting Behavior in Jordanian Elections, with Mohamed Shedeed

Selected Editor Reviewed

1. ’Should I Get Them for You?’ Survey Protocols When Measuring Social Networks. Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, December 2025.

2. The Quiet Demise of Jordan’s Political Space. Journal of Democracy, August 2025.

3. Hope and Fear in Syria. Journal of Democracy, December 10, 2024.

4. Refugee Commodification and Syrian Integration into Jordanian Education. Project on Middle East Political Science, Special Issue on Refugee Commodification in the Middle East, March 2024.

5. Transparency and Repression in Jordan’s Response to COVID-19. Project on Middle East Political Science, Special Issue on the COVID-19 Pandemic, April 2020.

6. Jordanians see more to worry about in their economy than Syrian refugees. Lawfare, September 2019.

7. What a Syrian neighborhood can teach us about the talks to end the civil war, with Dan Wilkofsky. War on the Rocks, February 2017.

8. U.N. Mediation in the Syrian Crisis: From Kofi Annan to Lakhdar Brahimi, with Raymond Hinnebusch, I. William Zartman, and Omar Imady. International Peace Institute, March 2016.