My dissertation uses interviews with pregnant and postpartum first-time mothers to understand how predictive algorithms impact new mothers’ anxieties and relationships.

Using interviews with college students, I created the concept “visibility work” to describe how incoming freshman use Instagram to build social capital. However, all visibility does not yield the same results and the visibility work students engage in differs by class background (among other demographics). This work contributes to scholarship on higher education and class divides.

You can read the publication by clicking here.

In collaboration with Dr. Jeff Sheng, we use interviews with anonymous Reddit users in subreddits dedicated to the consumption of brand-name goods (e.g. Lululemon) to theorize how the internet reshapes the ways we seek and experience social status in our everyday lives. We theorize “ephemeral status” to capture the short-lived and often fleeting social validation we experience in online space.

This research is currently under review for publication.

In collaboration with Dr. Paige Sweet and student Emma Tiersten-Nyman, this research draws on interviews and ethnographic data with domestic violence survivors during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand what drives instability and homelessness for this demographic. We show how motherhood and sexuality—what we call “gendered risks""—push and pull survivors across temporary housing situations that further entrench them in precarity.

This research is under review for publication.

In collaboration wtih the Coordinated Community Response Team (CCRT) at the University of Michigan’s Office of Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX (ECRT), this research used targeted focus groups and trauma-based research methods to understand the barriers students face when reporting sexual assault on campus.

Part of the broader URSA study led by Dr. Elizabeth Armstrong and Dr. Sandra Levitsky, this research project examined archival news and media coverage of sexual assaults on college campuses post-2011 to understand how legal knowledge is constructed through the media. We map out the recurring narrative structure news outlets relied on to establish colleges as “kangaroo courts” and how this impacted public opinions on sexual assaults on campuses.

Awarded the Robert Cooley Angell Award for best honors sociology thesis, this research explored the role of urban farms in a gentrifying and redeveloping Detroit. I theorize the role of important social actors I call “brokers” who enable certain urban farmers to bridge relationships between long-term Detroit residents and newcomers.