About

I am the Assistant Director for the Center for Economy and Society and Assistant Research Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins. My research interests are in the history of political thought, intellectual history, and political economy.  

My first book, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2022) traces the reception and influence of Adam Smith's ideas in American thought, politics, and culture from the eighteenth century to today. It was named a 2023 PROSE Category Winner in Economics from the Association of American Publishers and listed as one of NPR’s Books We Love in 2022.

My other research interests include the normative and empirical study of economic inequality, economic ideas in political debate, feminist political economy, and Asian American history and politics.

I received my PhD in Political Science in 2018 from Stanford University, where I was a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, as well as a Gerald J. Lieberman Fellow, one of the University's highest distinctions for doctoral students. I was a postdoctoral research associate at the Political Theory Project at Brown University from 2018-2020, and a College Fellow and Lecturer at Harvard in Social Studies from 2020-2023. I hold an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History, a secondary MPhil in Classics from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. in Political Economy and Classics from the University of California, Berkeley. 

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