Hello! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. I earned my doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, with special emphases in critical and feminist criminology, social inequalities, and qualitative methods.

I research at the intersections of critical criminology, race, gender, and health justice, using qualitative methods to document the lived realities of criminalization and health inequities.

My current research is a community-engaged project that investigates the links between power, settler colonialism, and reproductive health inequities among unsheltered women in Northern Arizona. I am also the Principal Investigator on an interdisciplinary team research grant, interrogating how types of homeless shelters (lack of shelter, congregate shelters, and hotel/motel emergency shelters) impact health and healthcare access across Northern Arizona. This work includes Indigenous and rural perspectives to more fully understand how homelessness impacts health, advancing health equity measures in the region.

My past research focused on the gendered and racialized politics of carcerality to explore how punishment is differentially experienced and resisted, and how those punitive measures are justified and reinforced by institutional gatekeepers. I have analyzed how neoliberal therapy narratives are formulated and enforced at a women’s reentry center and have researched the embodiment of carcerality and resistance among incarcerated men of color. I have also used interview data, in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the CDC, to analyze the experiences of sexual and reproductive health care among women marginalized by race, economic disadvantage, and criminalization. I continue to theorize and investigate the links between health inequities, carcerality, and colonialism. Feel free to peruse through my publications read about my work.

As an educator, I seek to produce student-centered learning experiences that make challenging course material relevant to students’ lives. I work to create respectful classroom environments where we can learn from one another, and where we can make the sociological connections between our personal experiences and larger structural patterns.