Biography

Following my graduation from Georgetown, I have worked as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Berlin, earned an MSc in Criminology from Oxford, and served as Program Coordinator for the Prison Education Project at Washington University in St. Louis. The two pillars of my professional life are education and criminal justice research. My core academic interest is the changing role of judicial discretion at sentencing. The recent proliferation of sentencing grids, narrative guidelines, and risk-assessment algorithms has made sentences more predictable and consistent, but this shift has also diminished judges’ abilities to engage with the individual characteristics of the people being sentenced. My studies and work experience have shown me that rigid approaches to sentencing can leave people doubting procedural and outcome fairness. Adopting the view that sentencing is morally complex and not always amenable to rote procedure, I will study the progression away from human judicial discretion and seek a framework to identify when it has gone too far. In the end, my research will prove useful to policymakers and practitioners attempting to craft sentencing systems in their own jurisdictions.

Previous Education

University of Oxford Criminology 2025
Georgetown University Psychology 2023