I am a PhD candidate at The New School for Social Research. My research explores how people understand—and misunderstand—one another, particularly in technology-mediated environments, such as social media and large language models. I study how factors like political ideology, perspective-taking, cognitive style, and topic knowledge contribute to misinterpretations.

My work bridges cognitive and social psychology and combines quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how people process messages, infer intentions, and navigate ambiguity online.

In addition to research, I teach courses in psychology and statistics and research methods. In other words, when I’m not doing research, I’m talking about it!

Maybe because my path to academia was shaped by a career in media and communications, I’m especially committed to publicly engaged scholarship. I’m the founder and editor-in-chief of Psychology Today’s blog, The Public Sphere, which explores current events through the lens of social, political, and cognitive psychology.