Stephen's research focuses on how political theorists in the modern and contemporary periods explain the political significance of "negative emotions" like anxiety, despair, guilt, and shame. His dissertation, Guilty Subjects, Reparative Politics: On Guilt and Political Theory after Freud, reveals a current of thinking in the liberal and critical theoretical traditions that attempts to reconceptualize guilt-feelings as potentially critical expressions of value rather than reflexive forms of self-punishment. The primary aim of his research is unearth underappreciated reservoirs of political insight or energy in emotions typically considered dead ends of politics.

Stephen's other research interests include psychoanalysis and politics, critical theory, Marx and Marxism, fascist political thought, pessimism, and theories of responsibility. He is developing a set of secondary projects that attempt to map the emotional universe of contemporary fascist movements through "negative emotions" like dread, demoralization, despair, and melancholia. The upshot of these projects is to explain how he contemporary fascist subject relates to their own suffering on fundamentally different terms than the fascists of the interwar period.

Stephen received his PhD in Political Science from UCLA in June of 2024. He also holds an MA in Politics from the New School for Social Research, an MS in Global Affairs from New York University, and a BA in Political Science from Fordham University. From 2020-2021 and from June to December of 2023 he served as an Assistant Editor for the journal Political Theory. His work has been published in Contemporary Political Theory and parallax.