My research focuses broadly on understanding the operation of power. I delve into questions about urban space, environmental change, politics, and the role of institutions of racial domination (including the prison). I am driven by questions that look at how inequality is maintained and reproduced in the everyday.

I spent 18 months of field research in post-Katrina New Orleans comparing the political strategies and tactics of three rebuilding struggles in the city. This research led to my dissertation, The Politics of Visibility: Urban Housing Struggles in Post-Katrina New Orleans, which compared three housing and land struggles in the post-Hurricane political landscape. I analyzed the everyday politics that emerge around the closure of public housing, the razing of a neighborhood for a dual-hospital complex, and the attempt to “green” the majority Black, working class Lower Ninth Ward.

See recent published work in Gender, Place, and Culture “Constructing the unruly public: governing affect & legitimate knowledge in post-Katrina New Orleans”

saveMidCity

From 2021-2023 I conducted qualitative research on the state of LGBTQ+ Rhode Islanders for the Rhode Island Foundation. The co-authored published study will be available in pdf and web-based form in Fall 2023.