These places matter because they are where questions became concrete for me: where coursework turned into fieldwork, where institutional work gained texture, and where different political contexts sharpened the comparative lens I still use.
Some are homes, some are research sites, and some are part of the route between them. Together they trace the geography behind how I think and work.
Seattle Seattle and Fall City are home in the plainest sense, but they are also places I have moved beyond. Nevertheless, in my years away from the Snoqualmie Valley, my appreciation for the community grew. Los Angeles Los Angeles was the site of undergraduate formation: intellectually demanding, expansive, and strangely tender in the details. It is where my academic voice sharpened and where world politics became something lived rather than merely studied. New York I spent the autumn of 2023 in New York as one of thirteen Occidental College seniors selected for the Kahane United Nations Program — taking courses on human rights and conflict prevention while... Dublin I moved to Dublin in September 2024 for my MPhil in International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin, expecting to stay for a year. I stayed longer, and by the time I left I had written a... Palermo Palermo belongs to the map as a place of movement, study, and memory rather than formal career milestones. It sits at the intersection of migration questions, Mediterranean context, and some of the site's most personal details. Tunis Tunisia was one of the best experiences in my life, and it almost didn't happen. Türkiye Research focus — senior thesis case study on ethnoreligious nationalism where secularism, Islam, and national identity take a fundamentally different form. Australia I was born in Sydney, Australia, and it was home until my family moved to the Seattle area when I was just shy of 8 years old. It's the first of several places I've called home - followed by Washington State, Los Angeles, Dublin, and wherever comes next.