I am currently at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as an Assistant Professor. I have two research programs. First, applying comparative politics insights on civil-military relations to understand American politics. I have published several articles on the topic and have a couple more submitted for review. Fellow IU alumnus Sean Webeck (Defense Security Cooperation University) is a coauthor for three of them. I am also working on a project about arms transfers. Specifically, my coauthor Benjamin Tkach (Mississippi State University) and I have created a new typological category, “value arms”, to represent affordable, older technology, reused weapons generally procured by lower- and middle-income countries. In the post-Cold War era, supply to this market was dominated by Russia and China. However, China is now overtaking Russia. In September 2024, the Department of Defense and the Defense Security Cooperation University, in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, granted us $477,000 to create the first dataset on the value arms market.