I am a medical anthropologist with extensive training in linguistic anthropology and an
applied/engaged ethnographer. My research program explores how people navigate everyday ethical and
political dilemmas in providing and accessing care for psychiatric and substance use disorders in the
United States in rural and urban contexts. 

My first book project draws on my research in  Los Angeles and documents the ethical, political, and economic dilemmas that emerge amid psychiatric
crises for people with severe mental health disorders or disabilities and their professional or family caretakers. Engaging an extensive historical and contemporary archive and 4 years of ethnographic research, the book documents how histories of mental health care activism and political reform have shaped legal processes and institutional structures of public mental healthcare in Los Angeles and its intersections with the criminal justice system. The book engages the lived experiences of medical and legal professionals working at the intersections of law and medicine, people who have been treated in crisis care contexts and people engaged in medical healthcare activism to to explore how medico-legal articulations of disability, autonomy, health, and safety impact when, how, and which people may access institutionalized care. 

My second project is based on collaborative fieldwork conducted with China Scherz (Keogh School of Global Affairs, Notre Dame) in Central Appalachia. There, a complex of historical, economic, medical, and culturally extractivist policies have profoundly shaped public access to and perceptions of biomedical care. Our research is a 4-year longitudinal and person-centered comparative study of clinical and faith-based recovery programs. As people discern how and when to engage in faith-based and clinical recovery models, we document how these distinct care modalities shape individual and communal narratives of self-determination, hope, freedom, and well-being. In the process, we propose a "hopesick" model of interdependency that highlights and emphasizes the cultural, political, economic, and interpersonal contingency that animates our research collaborators' practices of recovery, relapse, and personal accountability.