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I am a British American academic, living in Santiago, Chile. Formerly, I was an Assistant Professor at Universidad de los Andes. I am currently completing a book on womanhood, family, and liberty in Tocqueville’s democratic theory.
My primary research area is in the democratic theory of Alexis de Tocqueville. This has been published in History of Human Sciences, The Tocqueville Review, and various edited academic volumes.
My focus on family and women within Tocqueville’s democratic theory has led me to an overlapping research track concerned with associationalism, the ethics of care, and the puzzles of the common life in our time.
Further, I am curious about Tocqueville’s inheritors. I have published on Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, who relied heavily on Tocqueville’s thought, and on Christopher Lasch who studied and diagnosed social problems similar to those confronted by Tocqueville.
I have also published on the thought of Hannah Arendt, Owen Barfield, and Edith Stein.
My PhD in Politics was completed at King’s College London, where I achieved a pass with no corrections (the highest outcome within the British doctoral system). Prior to my doctoral work, I studied at University College London and Queen Mary University of London for my MA in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History, which was awarded with Distinction. My undergraduate studies in medieval history were completed at the University of St Andrews.
I have taught political theory, philosophy, history, and politics to students from a variety of backgrounds, and I have led classes that included both native and international students in Britain, France, and Chile. Facilitating conversations in these dynamic and diverse contexts has proved consistently inspiring and enriching.
Publications
Journal Articles
"Religion, Womanhood, and Democratic Conditions in Tocqueville," The Tocqueville Review 44, no. 2 (2023): 169–99.
"Tocqueville and The Ostroms," History of the Human Sciences 36, no. 3–4 (2023): 27–54.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
"The Woman's Soul as 'Shelter': Edith Stein on the Work of Women," in The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy: By the Sweat of Your Brow, ed. Gene Callahan (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), 207–31.
(With Josefina Araos Bralic), "Hannah Arendt on the Triumph of homo faber and the Fragility of Human Action," in The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy: By the Sweat of Your Brow, ed. Gene Callahan (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), 257–75.
"Family Associations to Free Associations: From Wollstonecraft's and Tocqueville's Revolutionary Theories of Marriage to Temperance, Property, and Suffrage," in Freedom of Association, Volume I: In Theory, ed. Luke C. Sheahan and Kenneth B. McIntyre (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), 147–70.
"Family Tensions in Tocqueville and Lasch: Two Perspectives on the Domestic Sphere and Democratic Life," in Culture, Secularization, and Democracy: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville, ed. Sophie van Bijsterveld and Hans-Martien ten Napel (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2024), 32–51.
"Metaphor, Meaning, and Mind: Knowledge and Imagination in Owen Barfield," in Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism Revisited, ed. Gene Callahan and Kenneth B. McIntyre (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 145–70.
"Toward a More 'Tocquevillian' Social Science: Family, Gender, Loyalty, and Virtue in Modern Democratic Associationalism," in Interdisciplinary Studies of the Political Order: New Applications of Public Choice Theory, ed. Don J. Boudreaux, Christopher J. Coyne, and Bobbi Herzberg (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 41–66.
Book Reviews
Review of Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls, by Alan S. Kahan, History of Political Thought 38, no. 4 (2017): 776–79.
Review of The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters, by Anthony Pagden, Journal of Intellectual History and Political Thought 2, no. 1 (2013): 242–47.
Working Projects
“Individualism and Feminism in Democracy: Lasch and Hochschild as Inheritors of Tocqueville’s Tensions.” Accepted as contribution to volume, Tocqueville’s Tensions.
“Tocqueville on Post-Truth Politics.” Research article under review.
Democracy Domesticated: Tocqueville on Womanhood, Family, and Liberty. Book project.
The Gender Gap in Neo-Tocquevillian Associationalism. Short book project.
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