The Gist

I am a Sociology Ph.D. Candidate in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University studying work and labor in the food system, urban poverty governance, and tenant responses to housing inequality. I received my Master of Science in Food Studies from Syracuse University in 2019 where my research examined the closure of an independently owned grocery store in one of Syracuse’s poorest neighborhoods, the Near Westside. While finishing my M.S. degree and before returning for my Ph.D., I worked for Greater Syracuse H.O.P.E., a state-funded anti-poverty initiative implemented in Syracuse. I have extensive experience with qualitative research methods and am deeply committed to the ethnographic tradition.

I spent the first half of my twenties in the physical sciences realm working as an environmental engineer. Formerly a young woman pushed into a career in STEM, my teaching philosophy is one of helping people understand how to think critically about the society around them. Regardless of one’s interests, my teaching practices are rooted in equipping students with a toolkit that allows them to view the workings of the world through a sociological lens. In doing so, students are allowed a greater sense of control over their often unpredictable and precarious futures.