Associate Professor in Organizational Studies and Political Science (by courtesy)
About
I am an Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science at the University of Michigan.
I am also Associate Faculty at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College. From 2016-2024 I was an Associate Professor of Public Management at the Blavatnik School and a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College.
My research is on the politics and management of policy implementation, public service delivery, and bureaucratic reform. My book, Reform as Process: Implementing Change in Public Bureaucracies, will be published in early 2026 by Columbia University Press. I also research on the challenges of causal inference, external validity, and applying evidence in government decision-making.
In 2022-23 I was on sabbatical as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.
At the University of Michigan I teach courses listed in Organizational Studies, Political Science, International Studies, and Public Policy such as Making Public Services Work, Organizational Performance and Reform, Rethinking the Governance of Public and Private Organizations, and Public Service Reform Around the World.
At the Blavatnik School I served as academic co-director of the People in Government Lab and co-research director of the DeliverEd (delivering education reforms) project. I also co-convened the MPP core course on Evidence and Public Policy, the Organisational Effectiveness module of the Blavatnik School’s Public Leaders Programmes, and an eight-week online course on Evidence in Public Policy.
Previously I was also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College London, Department of Economics, completed my PhD in the Government Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and worked as an economist in Ghana’s Ministry of Trade and Industry as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow and was a Senior Researcher at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Cape Town. I also hold MSc degrees in African Studies and Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Economics from Williams College.