I was born and mostly raised in the US South. But I spent two formative years as a child in Bonn, (West) Germany, where I went to an echt kindergarten and first played soccer. After my family moved back to the States, I graduated from high school in Alabama and went to college at the University of Mississippi, where I studied at the Croft Institute for International Studies. A Fulbright fellowship then took me to back to Germany for postgraduate teaching and study; that year, I also played keys in a band with erstwhile krautrockers and became a fan of Bundesliga club Borussia Mönchengladbach, whose games I still watch on weekends. Berlin and New York were then home for several years while I worked as a freelance editor. I then moved to Geneva to study at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID). I went on to earn a PhD in history from Duke University.