WELCOME
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at University of Wisconsin – Madison and an incoming postdoctoral scholar at SUNY Buffalo. I am a political sociologist interested in social movements, political inequality, and political communication. I employ a range of qualitative methods to address urgent concerns about the health of our democracy across multiple domains. I have published research in Politics & Society, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, and The Forum.
I explore a range of questions about contemporary democracy: What motivates people to participate in democracy? How do ordinary people experience democracy? What are threats to democracy and what can we do about them? My research has important implications in times of democratic crisis - when concerns of plummeting trust, declining participation, rampant inequality, and democratic backsliding abound – challenging us to rethink the structure of our political institutions in pursuit of a more just, democratic future.
My dissertation is a multi-year ethnography of engaged citizenship in Wisconsin and has been generously supported by the Russell Sage Foundation. My community-engaged scholarship has been supported through a Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship, the Morgridge Center, and the UW Madison Center for the Humanities.
I am engaged in service to build a more collaborative community within academia. I am the co-founder of the Qualitative Methods Workshop and the graduate student coordinator for the Wisconsin Center for Ethnographic Research (WISCER). I am on the leadership committee for the Sociology Graduate Mentoring Committee. I received the inaugural Sociology Graduate Student Service Award and a UW Madison Graduate Student Service Award for this work.