I'm a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Broadly, my dissertation integrates work from both American and comparative political behavior to develop a theory of how context is consequential for what people know about politics and the types of information citizens use to feel efficacious. In my dissertation/book project, I examine how variation in institutional and electoral design and issue salience shapes the way citizens in new democracies pursue and process information in ways that make sense for where they are.