Education
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., Cornell University
J.D., New York University School of Law
Biography
I joined the Political Science Department at Haverford College in 1999 after earning a Ph.D. in American Politics at Cornell University and a J.D. at New York University School of Law. My teaching and research interests focus on urban politics and public policy and the varied ways in which people become engaged in politics in order to effect political, economic, social, and cultural change.
Research
My research focuses on urban politics and policy in American cities. I have been particularly interested in the capacity of ordinary people to effect political change through community-based organizing, issue advocacy, and social movement protest. Under what conditions does grassroots activism emerge and expand in urban centers? Why does it sometimes spark enduring shifts in local power relations and public policy? Why and how does citizen mobilization typically encounter potent opposition from entrenched interest groups and structural forces that reaffirm existing arrangements? These are some of the core questions that have guided much of my scholarship in recent years.
Selected Publications
“The Insurgent Nature of Black Politics in Contemporary Philadelphia” in If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress: Black Politics in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia, ed. James Wolfinger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2022)
“Analyzing Urban Politics: A Mobilization-Governance Framework,” Urban Affairs Review, vol. 56, no. 4 (July 2020)
Urban Politics: A Reader (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2016)
"Ambivalence over Participatory Planning within a Progressive Regime: Waterfront Planning in Philadelphia," Journal of Planning Education and Research, vol. 33, no. 3 (September 2013)
"Mobilization on the Waterfront: The Ideological/Cultural Roots of Potential Regime Change in Philadelphia," Urban Affairs Review, vol. 44, no. 5 (May 2009)
"Evolving Visions of Waterfront Development in Postindustrial Philadelphia: The Formative Role of Elite Ideologies,"Journal of Planning History, vol. 7, no. 4 (November 2009)
"Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative: A Case Study of Mayoral Leadership, Bold Planning and Conflict," Housing Policy Debate, vol. 17, no. 3 (2006)
"Ideology, Consciousness, and Inner-City Revitalization: The Case of Stephen Goldsmith's Indianapolis," Journal of Urban Affairs, vol. 25, no. 1 (2003)
"Neighborhoods, Race, and the State," review essay, Journal of Urban History, vol. 29, no. 6 (Sept. 2003)
Urban Policy Reconsidered: Dialogues on the Problems and Prospects of American Cities, Charles C. Euchner and Stephen J. McGovern (New York: Routledge, 2003)
The Politics of Downtown Development: Dynamic Political Cultures in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998)