About

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I study Congress, representation, and political behavior, with a focus on constituent service and constituent-legislator contact in the U.S. Congress.

My work explores how constituent-legislator communication translates into representation. In my dissertation, I use survey data, archived constituent letters from congressional papers, and a conjoint experiment to understand how and why constituents ask their legislators for help. I show the key role that factors such as partisanship and constituents’ sense of deservingness play in the constituent-legislator relationship, even in the area of constituent service.