Studying how the U.S. military assesses and judges ethically problematic behavior done by others in the military.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Duke University, where my work sits at the intersection of civil–military relations, security, peace, and conflict, and political behavior and identities.
My dissertation asks how United States (U.S.) military members and veterans evaluate wrongdoing within the ranks — and why judgments about the person who committed the misconduct so often diverge from judgments about the act itself. I combine pre-registered survey experiments with military and veteran samples, comparative case analysis of war crimes, and work on presidential pardons of military members.
I am on the academic job market in the 2026–2027 cycle, with a defense planned for Spring 2027. I hold dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship. Away from research, I am an amateur birder, hold an Amateur Extra Class Ham Radio license, and love cheering for my Michigan sports teams and collecting Criterion Collection films.
My dissertation consists of three papers. The first two are quantitative studies exploring various aspects of a factorial survey experiment, where respondents evaluate a vignette involving a U.S. Army lieutenant directing the shooting of an unarmed civilian motorcyclist. The third paper is qualitative, analyzing several comparative case studies of U.S. military war crimes, the responses from the military, and the lessons learned from each case.
A pre-registered 2×2 survey experiment with 553 U.S. military members and veterans. Making a perpetrator personally abrasive shifted how respondents judged them as a person — colder, more deserving of punishment — without moving their approval of the act or their willingness to report it. Moral evaluation of the person and of the act became separate.
Method: factorial vignette experiment · N = 553 · Prolific
Extends person–act dissociation to the politics of presidential pardons for military members, testing partisanship, religious identity, and partisan social-media exposure as moderators of how a pardon reshapes military and public judgment.
Method: survey experiment (pardon subsample) · pre-analysis plan
Builds a typological theory of when institutional reform follows U.S. military war crimes. Across the My Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the Eddie Gallagher trial and presidential pardon, it traces how three conditions — the adequacy of ethics training, whether the military resists apologist narratives, and political intervention — combine to yield full, partial, or no reform.
Method: typological theory & process tracing · comparative case studies
Robinson, Justine. Review of Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor's Surprising Journey Inside America's Gun Culture, by David Yamane. The Independent Review Book Review 29, no. 4 (Spring 2025).
I am committed to accessible, evidence-forward teaching in international relations, security studies, and U.S. foreign policy.
Average instructor rating as a teaching assistant, across five sections at Duke University (2023–2024) — above the departmental and university means in every section.
"Masterfully explains confusing concepts with examples — patient, and never dismissing a student's opinion."Student evaluation · Intro to International Relations
"She made our discussion sections productive and engaging — a phenomenal teacher."Student evaluation · American Foreign Policy
"Friendly and approachable while remaining very instructive; her handouts were very useful."Student evaluation · American Foreign Policy
My teaching statement sets out a multimodal, accessibility-forward pedagogy: pairing scholarly texts with film, documentary, audio, and primary sources so students meet each idea in more than one form, and designing assessment to reward growth over performance under pressure.
Read the teaching statement ↓