She has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard and Georgetown respectively and has held fellowships at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (Harvard University) and the Miller Center (University of Virginia). She is the author of Coalitions of Convenience: United States Interventions after the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2011) as well as numerous articles on topics of international security, which she has published in such journals as the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Political Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Strategic Studies.