Areas: Race & Multiracial Identity, Gender & Masculinities, Sociology of Science, Religion & Spirituality, Qualitative Research Methods
B.A., University of Washington, Washington State
M.A., University of Washington, Washington State
My research examines how perceptions of uncertainty shape social life. As an intersectional sociologist of identity and interaction, I study how people respond to being seen as racially ambiguous, spiritually irrational, or socially unsettled, and what those responses reveal about the structures that produce them. My dissertation, The Monoracial Imperative, draws on original qualitative research to examine how multiracial people navigate a social world organized around the assumption of singular racial belonging. My work has been published in the Journal of Cultural and Ethnic Studies, the International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, and dePICTions, and has been featured on NPR and in the New York Times. Teaching is the other half of what I do. I take it seriously and am deeply proud of it. I have served as instructor of record across six courses at UCSB, Westmont College, and Santa Barbara City College, and I was recognized with the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 2025. I founded MIRROR, an undergraduate research group dedicated to making academia's hidden curriculum visible and moving first-generation and underrepresented students toward graduate success. My goal is to find a departmental home where rigorous sociological thinking and real-world relevance are not seen as competing values, but as the whole point.
Courses:
I have been instructor of record for the following courses. Classes that have an asterisk indicates multiple times as instructor. Introduction to Sociology, Qualitative Research Methods*,Social Inequalities, Social Theory, Social Problems