I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, founder of the Toxic Action Lab, and alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program.
Working alongside residents, resource managers, scientists, and the state, my research examines complex human-environmental interactions at the confluence of economic, ecological, and socio-political transformations. To date, I've developed this research program across two distinct sites – first, in eastern African freshwater fisheries where I've maintained long-term fieldwork since 2007, and most recently, in small and mid-sized cities in the U.S. Midwest, where I began conducting community-engaged, action-oriented research on environmental contamination and health equity in early 2020.
The National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have all supported various phases of my research.
I received my Ph.D and M.S. from the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the faculty at MSU, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, a Carson Fellow with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and a Postdoctoral Associate with the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University.
Working alongside residents, resource managers, scientists, and the state, my research examines complex human-environmental interactions at the confluence of economic, ecological, and socio-political transformations. To date, I've developed this research program across two distinct sites – first, in eastern African freshwater fisheries where I've maintained long-term fieldwork since 2007, and most recently, in small and mid-sized cities in the U.S. Midwest, where I began conducting community-engaged, action-oriented research on environmental contamination and health equity in early 2020.
The National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have all supported various phases of my research.
I received my Ph.D and M.S. from the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the faculty at MSU, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, a Carson Fellow with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and a Postdoctoral Associate with the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University.