About
I am a public, mixed-methods sociologist
committed to reducing the negative impacts
of the criminal legal system and poverty.
What am I about?
​I conduct rigorous, person-centered research to accurately describe social problems, identify obscured processes, and support people as they disentangle themselves from oppressive systems. My work details how systems and community sentiment shape legal financial obligations, policing, court processes, incarceration, and responses to homelessness and mental illness. I hope this research and our collective learning informs public policy and leads to real change in people's lives.​​
My approach is informed by longstanding critiques of oppression:
How are people marked as different being oppressed?
How is oppression recreating itself through institutions?
How does understanding oppression help us choose something different?
To me, success is doing things well and creating change:
Doing through healthy relationships, deep collaboration, and practicing integrity & interdependence
Change evidenced by improving material conditions, securing freedom, and a shared sense of abundance
Who am I?
A few answers: I grew up in a rural Washington town and in a working-class household. I am a white, cisgender woman--a status that has limited my experience with discrimination, allowed for institutional access, and requires me to learn and unlearn how to be in community with others. I'm lucky to live in Seattle with my husband, who is very good at reading books, and my two illiterate cats, who are very good at eating compostable bags & Twinkies.
Reality T.V.
Thrift stores
Dahlias
Miniature objects
Organization (I'm a virgo.)
Courier pigeons
Accessibility
Pike Place Market
Clarity
Green bell peppers
"Flannel" sleeping bags
Soggy lawns
Dried rosemary
Leading questions
Rollercoasters
Chocolate hummus
Towing companies
Indifference
"Progressive social movements do not simply produce statics and narrative of oppression; rather, the best ones do what great poetry always does: transport us to another place, compel us to relive horrors, and more importantly, enable us to imagine a new society." Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams
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"Everything worthwhile is done with other people." Mariame Kaba
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"Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion. Hope isn’t an emotion,
you know? Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline… we have to practice it every single day." Mariame Kaba