I am an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. I do research on a variety of topics that all address one core question: what brings diverse groups of people together, and what breaks them apart?
This work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociological Theory, Social Currents, and The Sociological Quarterly, among other outlets. I am also an associate editor at the journal Sociology of Religion.
Public sociology is an important part of my scholarly work. I was a 2021-2022 fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute and I am the editor and principal author at Sociological Images - one of the largest sociology blogs in the country. My research has also been featured at The Conversation, Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, FiveThirtyEight, The Syllabus, ThinkProgress, and HuffPost, among others.
I earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, where I worked as an Edelstein Fellow with the American Mosaic Project and an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow with the Center for the Study of Political Psychology. I also hold an M.A. in Sociology from UMN and a B.A. in Political Theory and Social Policy from Michigan State University’s James Madison College.