I research the co-development of social and environmental change, with a particular focus on the conditions that foster inequitable, intersecting crises worldwide and the ways communities respond to achieve greater justice.
My current research investigates environmental justice in the first two years of life, with a widespread focus on food, water, housing, and community change particularly across the United States. From this project, I have published about the relationship between first foods, food equity, and the environment in Environmental Justice (lead article, 2018) and in Breastfeeding Medicine (2017). My book manuscript is in preparation (expected publication 2024).
During fieldwork associated with my book, the African American Breastfeeding Network and I co-launched WE-RISE (Water and Environmental Research for Infants' Safe Eating). Our study engaged community health workers, activists, students, and professional researchers in centering urban families' experiences during a lead contaminated drinking water crisis, through surveys, community conversations, and archival research. Over 80% of the funding we received for our study went to communities participating. We published results on the lived experiences of families navigating contaminated water in their environment in the Journal of Human Lactation (2021) and on the intersecting elements of residential segregation that forms a foundation for these lived conditions in a special issue on Black Lives Matter in the journal Environmental Justice (2021).
Additionally, I analyze climate activism, including its history, current politics, and impacts. I published on this topic with Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse, and Brigid Mark in the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2021) and on educators' role within this with Corrie Grosse in the Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology (2020), featured in the Climate Strike Educator Resource Guide (2019) and Global Campaign for PEACEducation (2019), among other outlets.
Previously, I completed my dissertation, Cultivating Local Food: Knowledge, Power, and (Trans)Formations in American Policy and Society , which investigates the way distinct racialized and place-based communities mobilize knowledge in urban food systems, and to what effect, with a focus on Detroit and Cleveland. I published from this project in Science as Culture (special issue on justice and counter expertise, 2019), Urban Farm Magazine (2015), and with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) for their What Makes Urban Food Policy Happen? report (2017).
I have also finished shorter qualitative research projects concerning the global epistemic dimensions of intellectual property rights debates in food and agriculture (published in Mobilization: An International Journal, 2015), disparities in inclusion in environmental impact statements (published in the Michigan Journal of Sustainability, 2013), and the ethical treatment of human subjects of research (with Raymond De Vries, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 2011).
My current research investigates environmental justice in the first two years of life, with a widespread focus on food, water, housing, and community change particularly across the United States. From this project, I have published about the relationship between first foods, food equity, and the environment in Environmental Justice (lead article, 2018) and in Breastfeeding Medicine (2017). My book manuscript is in preparation (expected publication 2024).
During fieldwork associated with my book, the African American Breastfeeding Network and I co-launched WE-RISE (Water and Environmental Research for Infants' Safe Eating). Our study engaged community health workers, activists, students, and professional researchers in centering urban families' experiences during a lead contaminated drinking water crisis, through surveys, community conversations, and archival research. Over 80% of the funding we received for our study went to communities participating. We published results on the lived experiences of families navigating contaminated water in their environment in the Journal of Human Lactation (2021) and on the intersecting elements of residential segregation that forms a foundation for these lived conditions in a special issue on Black Lives Matter in the journal Environmental Justice (2021).
Additionally, I analyze climate activism, including its history, current politics, and impacts. I published on this topic with Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse, and Brigid Mark in the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2021) and on educators' role within this with Corrie Grosse in the Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology (2020), featured in the Climate Strike Educator Resource Guide (2019) and Global Campaign for PEACEducation (2019), among other outlets.
Previously, I completed my dissertation, Cultivating Local Food: Knowledge, Power, and (Trans)Formations in American Policy and Society , which investigates the way distinct racialized and place-based communities mobilize knowledge in urban food systems, and to what effect, with a focus on Detroit and Cleveland. I published from this project in Science as Culture (special issue on justice and counter expertise, 2019), Urban Farm Magazine (2015), and with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) for their What Makes Urban Food Policy Happen? report (2017).
I have also finished shorter qualitative research projects concerning the global epistemic dimensions of intellectual property rights debates in food and agriculture (published in Mobilization: An International Journal, 2015), disparities in inclusion in environmental impact statements (published in the Michigan Journal of Sustainability, 2013), and the ethical treatment of human subjects of research (with Raymond De Vries, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 2011).
