Born in North Carolina, I grew up in upstate New York and Istanbul, Turkey. After graduating from Reed College in 2005, I taught English at a public high school in Rennes, France, helped produce the Contemporary Istanbul Art Festival, served as a medical interpreter in New York City's public hospitals, and taught Turkish at Cornell University. I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and began teaching at Swarthmore College that year. I live in West Philadelphia.