I am an Associate Lecturer in International Relations at UCL’s Department of Political Science and the Co-Organizer of the Political Networks Online Colloquium (PNOC). Previously, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, held postdoctoral fellowships at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (Princeton University) and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (Harvard Kennedy School), and was the Managing Editor of Security Studies. I earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Brasília.
Before entering academia, I worked as a career diplomat in Brazil. In this position, I experienced firsthand the search for international status: like other emerging powers, Brazil then strove to be recognized as an equal by the great powers. But while a growing scholarly consensus indicates that the search for status motivates foreign policy and may even cause wars, we still understand little about how countries achieve status or how status motivates political behavior. My research engages these crucial debates by drawing from a multidisciplinary body of work.