education
Ph.D., Sociology, Stony Brook University, 2014
Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, 2012
M.A. Sociology, Stony Brook University, 2011
B.A., Communication Studies (focus on interpersonal), Sociology and English (rhetoric Minor), Albion College, 2008
professional positions
virginia commonwealth university
August 2022- Present
Associate Professor (tenured), Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.
robert wood johnson foundation
December 2021 - Present
Founding and Current Director of The Sexual Health Exploration Project
Virginia commonwealth university
January 2016 - August 2022
Assistant Professor, Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies
robert wood johnson foundation
August 2017 - May 2018
New Connections Fellow
Albion college
August 2014 - December 2015
Visiting Assistant Professor
FENWAY HEALTH INSTITUTE
August 2011 - May 2014
LGBT Population Health Pre-doctoral Fellow
interests and orientation(s)
As a medical sociologist and health rhetorician by training, and an undisciplined feminist metascientist by desire—with collaborative partnerships in public health, medicine, nursing, rehabilitation sciences, social work, health psychology, counselor education, public policy, and across the arts and humanities—I have extensive experience researching, transforming curricula, and translating sociomedical science from bench to bedside/classroom to the public square. Taking aim at the structures of power embedded within medicalization, my work challenges hegemonic notions of what is/isn’t “healthy,” and works to transform the health-science-knowledge ecosystem.
In addition to examining myriad traditional socioecological determinants of health, I also work to address inequities in the research lifecycle itself (from problem identification to implementation/translation). From integrating lived-experience leadership into health education program development, to supporting young adult and youth-led public sexual health education initiatives, to contending with the social, structural, and epistemic harms that have been done via gender, sexuality, and disability-based moral panics within the scientific enterprise, I am primarily concerned with actionable, systems change.
Ultimately, I hope my work increases individual power/autonomy in shared decision-making, and personal hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing; enriches patient-provider relationships through the cultivation of trust, respect, and humility; transforms medical education and health services professions training by integrating one-health thinking; and leads to justice-oriented health organizations and systems.