Scholarship
Welcome! I am a political theorist studying at Georgetown University, with American government as my secondary field. I am interested in the moral psychology undergirding theories of sovereignty, constituent power, and constitutional order from the early modern period to today. My current research focuses on a body of sixteenth-century thinkers associated with the French Renaissance and the French and Swiss reformations. You can find more concerning my research and teaching below.
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Research
As a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Georgetown University, I have enjoyed teaching and writing on a range of texts from the history of political thought. My monograph project, "Bridling the Prince: Reforming French Constitutional Thought, 1532–1586," examines a body of constitutional writing that emerged during the French Reformation and Wars of Religion, a key period of transition from medieval to modern political order. In it, I evaluate several permutations of constitutional argumentation—along with their concomitant theories of sovereignty, state, legitimacy, and resistance—that emerged under conditions of religious violence and civil war, especially following the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572. Key figures of my study include Jean Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, François Hotman, and Jean Bodin, while relevant contexts include northern European public humanism, French legal humanism, and broader currents of Protestant political thought.
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Other closely related interests include medieval and early modern mirrors for princes (Christine de Pizan, Desiderius Erasmus, Guillaume Budé) and writings on commerce, economic statecraft, cosmopolitanism, and reason of state during the long sixteenth century (Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus, Giovanni Botero).​
Portrait of Jean Calvin by Titian (16th c.)
via Wikimedia Commons
Articles and Working Papers
Jean Calvin's 1532 Seneca Commentary
Google Books, University of Ghent
Bridling the Prince: Humanist Counsel and Its Perils in Jean Calvin's Seneca Commentary
History of European Ideas. 2025. First View. DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2025.2500432
This piece, published in History of European Ideas, examines how Jean Calvin developed his early constitutional theory in response to a set of sixteenth-century writings concerning the “problem of counsel.” By situating Calvin’s 1532 commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia within a broader contextual study of humanist and classical texts, I show how Calvin first turned to classical constitutional models, such as the Roman tribunes and Spartan ephors, in response to the perceived inability of humanist counsel to effectively counteract the moral hazards of high office by limiting and regulating (or "bridling") the passions of rulers. When, in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin returned to the examples of the ephors and the tribunes as a model for contemporary popular magistrates, I argue that his argument was broadly consistent with the view advanced in the Seneca Commentary, as he articulated a constitutional theory more concerned with regulating the ordinary exercise of public authority than extraordinary conditions of resistance.
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​Curing the Patria: Diagnostic History and Law as Medicine in François Hotman's Francogallia​​​​ (Article Manuscript)
​​​​This paper examines François Hotman's turn to constitutional history to provide an institutional explanation for the causes of civil war. It argues that Hotman turned to constitutional history not only for an image of the natural state of the realm but as a tool for identifying deviations in the development of legal institutions. This method built on a comparative approach to the study of law developed in his Antitribonian (1567) that rejected the universality of Roman law in favor of a kind of legal particularism and described legislative activity as a medicine that varied in application depending on the body’s formal condition or constitution.​​​​​
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Teaching
While teaching and studying at Georgetown, I have had the opportunity to serve as instructor of record for Elements of Political Theory (Summer 2023) and to lead discussion sections through five courses in the history of political thought and one course in American government. I also served as instructor of record for The Constitutional Imagination: Between Power and Restraint (Fall 2024), a course designed for the 2024-25 Jill Hopper Memorial Fellowship that provided students a historical introduction (c. 1500 to present) to key concepts and debates in modern constitutional theory.
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My teaching interests lie at the intersection of early modern political thought and constitutional theory. I have included links to syllabi and course proposals below.
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Instructor of Record
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Elements of Political Theory - Summer 2023
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The Constitutional Imagination: Between Power and Restraint - Fall 2024
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Teaching Assistant​
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Political & Social Thought - Spring 2021. Fall 2022. Spring 2023.
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U.S. Political Systems - Spring 2022.
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Elements of Political Theory - Fall 2020. Fall 2021.
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Course Proposal
Figure of Justice from Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Allegory of Good Government (1338), via Google Arts and Culture.