Hello! I’m a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. I’m also the blog editor for Contexts, the American Sociological Association’s public-facing magazine.

I study how parents and children understand their roles and how cultural and structural factors shape these understandings. My dissertation, recipient of the Eastern Sociological Society’s 2024 Coser Dissertation Proposal Award, analyzes how U.S. college graduates in their late 20s and early 30s negotiate financial relationships with their parents. Drawing on 140+ interviews with young adults and parents, I examine the moral meanings both generations attach to financial (in)dependence. This project expands on insights from two previous studies examining young adult help-seeking amidst COVID-19 educational disruptions. The first, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, reveals how social class divides in college students’ expectations for parents’ roles gave rise to divergent coping strategies I termed “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy.” The second, published in Socius with collaborators Arielle Kuperberg and Joan Maya Mazelis, considers this issue from a life course perspective, revealing how young adults’ primary “safety net” shifts from parents to romantic partners over time. This research has been supported by the Institute of Education Sciences and the Russell Sage Foundation.

In other projects, I’ve explored inequality, morality, and meaning-making through the lens of race/ethnicity and religion. My article in the Annual Review of Sociology with Wendy Roth and Alejandra Regla-Vargas examines how people understand racial categories and why these interpretations matter. An article published in Socius (with Alanna Gillis) uncovers the racially disparate consequences of color-blind university policies, and another forthcoming in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (with Melissa Wilde and Tessa Huttenlocher) documents historical wealth disparities among U.S. religious groups. My ongoing research with Evan Stewart examines racial differences in religious influences on vaccine hesitancy. My earlier work examined multifaith chaplaincy on elite college campuses (with Wendy Cadge) and interfaith dialogue following the 2016 presidential election (with Roman Williams).