I am currently a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Middle East Studies (IMES) at the George Washington University (GWU). In 2023-2024, I was a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I was previously Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) from 2014-2024, where I also served as the Chastain-Johnston Middle Eastern Studies Distinguished Professor in Peace Studies from 2019-2022 and Director of the Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights (PJHR) from 2020-2023.

I specialize in the 20th century history of U.S. foreign relations. My research focuses on U.S. relations with Iran, the Islamic world, human rights, transnational history, and international relations. My first book, U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women’s Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) explored the integration of American concerns for women’s human rights into U.S. policy towards the Islamic world since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. My other publications include book chapters, journal articles, research reports, and state of the field essays.

I am currently writing a monograph about the multiple levels of American-Iranian engagement – diplomatic, cultural, military, economic, people-to-people, and transnational – during the first half of the twentieth century, entitled The Ties That Bind: U.S.-Iran Relations, 1905-1953 and which is under contract with Columbia University Press in its Global America series.

At Florida Atlantic University, I taught undergraduate courses on 20th century U.S. history, U.S. diplomatic history, the Cold War era, U.S.-Islamic relations, the history of human rights, historical methods, and the senior seminar. I taught graduate readings courses and research seminars on U.S. foreign relations history, the teaching practicum, and advised M.A. theses. At George Washington University, I advise M.A. capstone projects for the Middle East Studies program.

I am the recipient of many grants and honors, including a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend, a Rockefeller Archive Foundation Research Stipend, the Samuel Flagg Bemis Research Grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the SHAFR Summer Institute, and the Marvin Wachman Fellowship in Force and Diplomacy from the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD) at Temple University. I am an active member of SHAFR, as well as several other scholarly organizations. I have served on multiple SHAFR committees, including an elected three-year term on the on the SHAFR Executive Council from 2019-2021. I have also spoken in many academic and public settings, briefed government officials, have written policy-relevant articles in venues like the Washington Post and New York Times, and have been interviewed by NPR, The Atlantic, multiple podcasts, and other media outlets about Iran and other topics.

I am the winner of the 2019 Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize awarded by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. One of the highest honors in the field of U.S. foreign relations history, the Bernath Lecture Prize recognizes and encourages excellence in research and teaching by a younger historian (under age 41 or within 10 years of earning the Ph.D.). Prior winners have gone on to become leading scholars in the field. As part of the award, I delivered my Bernath Lecture, “Approaching the Islamic World,” at the SHAFR luncheon held at the American Historical Association annual conference in New York City in January 2020. My lecture was published in the June 2020 issue of Diplomatic History.

In addition to being a faculty member and scholar, I occasionally consult for civil society organizations, such as Women’s Learning Partnership, and work as a freelance editor. Since 2023, I am also a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project (ISP) Working Group, where I contributed to a bipartisan policy paper on Iran that was published in October 2024.

Prior to joining the faculty at FAU in 2014, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at La Salle University in Philadelphia (2010-2011) and an Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage (2011-2014). I was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. I earned my Ph.D. in History from Temple University, M.A. in History from the University of Connecticut, and A.B. in History from Vassar College.