Doug is a fourth year Ph.D. Candidate in the Political Science graduate program at Rutgers. He received a bachelor's degree in international studies and political science from the University of Scranton in 2010 and a master's degree in comparative politics from Rutgers in January 2013. In addition to his graduate research, Doug has served as Project Coordinator at the Center for European Studies at Rutgers since 2011 and as Director of the Rutgers-Ritsumeikan Exchange Program in the Political Science Department since last year. He has been a research assistant to Professor Eric Davis and Professor Richard Lau, and has served five semesters as a teaching assistant and two semesters as an instructor.
Doug's dissertation research will be in Jordan, where he will be conducting interviews with government leaders and citizens. His project seeks to better understand the ways that patronage relationships with elected leaders affect Jordanian political participation; since elections serve as vehicles for patronage and influence rather than policy, does protest become a more attractive way to impact the political system? If so, it could point to inherent instability in the country's political system. He was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Grant to perform his research. Doug has previously received a David L. Boren Scholarship for study abroad in Jordan (Spring 2009) and a Critical Language Scholarship from the State Department to study Arabic in Oman (Summer 2013).