My role as Resident Dean is to provide both academic and personal support to Adams House students and to help connect them with Harvard's many resources. I love how my role combines one-on-one advising with the work of building a community where all students can flourish. In Adams House, I work closely with the Faculty Deans and our team of over twenty Resident Tutors. I also represent Adams students at meetings of the Administrative Board and Honor Council and work regularly with Harvard's academic departments, the Advising Programs Office, the Academic Resource Center, the Registrar's Office, University Health Services, and Counseling and Mental Health Services. 

In addition to my role as Resident Dean, I also serve as a Lecturer in the Study of Religion. I received my B.A. from Yale in philosophy and my Ph.D. from Harvard in the Study of Religion. My teaching and research focus on modern religious thought, religious ethics, and the philosophy of religion. I am particularly interested in how modern views of reason inform both defenses and criticisms of religion, and how views about the rationality or irrationality of religion inform debates about ethics and politics. My work focuses particularly on eighteenth and nineteenth century German thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx, who have done so much to shape modern debates about religion.

My teaching has included courses on modern philosophy of religion, theories of secularization, religion in public life, and Christian ethics, as well as comparative courses in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. My current book project focuses on the religious and philosophical legacies of Immanuel Kant’s notion of autonomy, situated in relation to debates about secularization and modernity.

My hobbies include making music (as a singer, pianist, and organist), as well as photography and traveling with my family. My wife Meghan and I met as Yale undergrads in a singing group, and now we are trying to pass on our love of music to our four-year-old son Charlie, who also loves discussing Australian animals and making silly rhymes.

My wife Meghan received her Ed.D. from Harvard's Graduate School of Education with a focus on teacher professional development, and she has worked as both a classroom teacher and educational consultant.

While I'm new to the Resident Dean role this year, I was a Resident Tutor in Adams House for six years while pursuing my Ph.D. in the Study of Religion. During my Ph.D. studies, I also served as the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Study of Religion and directed the senior thesis program for religion concentrators. After finishing my Ph.D., I initially spent a year as a Harvard College Fellow teaching religion courses, and then spent four years away from Cambridge, first to teach in the religion department at Oberlin College and then to take up a research fellowship at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia.