SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE

  • 15+ years as a qualitative researcher

  • 3+ years as an opposition researcher

  • Hiring, onboarding, training, supervising, and evaluating the performance of remote opposition research coordinators and manager

  • Instructing Research Methods course at collegiate level

  • Writing research proposals

  • Writing IRB proposals and garnering approval

  • Writing literature reviews

  • Creating, issuing, coding, and analyzing data from print sources, surveys, and interviews

  • Compiling, editing/providing feedback on, publishing, and overseeing the publishing of reports, memos, traditional and digital media publications, research papers, and peer-reviewed journal articles

  • Writing, orally communicating, and presenting summarizations of study results to academics, movement leaders, and funders

  • Garnering funding from research findings

  • Overseeing opposition research projects with strategy and research firms

  • (Co)organizing and facilitating collaborative learning spaces for academic and movement researchers

RESEARCH STATEMENT (abridged)

My current and forthcoming work are geared toward engaging in community-based participatory research projects. Among the advantages of engaging in research aimed at better comprehending social problems, is witnessing firsthand the importance of involving and making the findings accessible to people who would most benefit from them. 

RESEARCH TOPICS

  • Health Equity & Justice: notably addressing racial health disparities and how solutions require protecting and expanding our democracy

  • Reproductive Justice: notably anti-abortion fake clinics, self-managed abortion, maternal and infant mortality, and anti-abortion leaders, groups, and organizations

  • Movement Building Strategies & Tactics: notably how to build intersectional movements

  • Collective Violence: notably how responses are impacted by framing and narratives 

GRADUATE RESEARCH

2020

Dissertation: “Building Intersectional Movements: Examining the Transition of a Single-Issue Organization into a Multi-Issue Organization”

Advisor/Research Chair: Dr. Joan Hermsen

Committee: Dr. Clarence Lo, Dr. Ibitola Pearce, Dr. Mary Jo Neitz, and Dr. Robert Benford

2009

Master’s Research Paper: “The Social Construction of Lynching Narratives”

Advisor/Research Chair: Dr. Robert Benford

Second Reader: Dr. Jennifer L. Dunn

RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

2025

Facilitator | Research Incubator/Collaborative Conversations: Health Equity and Justice | Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting-Jacksonville, FL

2024

Cofacilitator | Research Incubator/Collaborative Conversations: Reproductive Justice with Dr. Barbara Sutton and Dr. Shannon Carter | Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting-Albuquerque

2020

“Founding Reproductive Justice” | Black History Month event | Women’s Center at University of Missouri-Columbia

2019

“Giving Birth in America” | Women’s History Month event | Women’s Center at University of Missouri-Columbia

2017

“Finding Solace in Rejecting the Academia-Activism Binary” | When Academia Is Not Enough for Feminists of Color in Graduate School panel session with Alexia Angton, Kristin McCowan, and Elba Moise | National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference-Baltimore

Connecting Graduate Student Teaching, Research, and Activism panel with Alexia Angton, Kristin McCowan, and Elba Moise | Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting-Albuquerque

2016

“Progressive Politics: Rearticulating Alliance Politics and Utopic Visions” | Politics & Policy Making in Social Movements paper session presider | Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meeting-Chicago

“The Significance of Identities” | Something New, Something Borrowed: Understanding Contemporary Student Activism panel with Monica Hand, Conner Lewis, and Colleen Young | Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Conference | University of Missouri-Columbia

The Intersection of Race and Gender in the Movement for Black Lives panel | Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Conference | University of Missouri-Columbia

“Progressive Politics: Understanding the Vitality of Intersectionality” | Women’s Leadership Conference | University of Missouri-Columbia

Moderator: Expanding the Borders of Protest: How Collaboration Informs Graduate Student Research panel with Kenneth Bryant, Jr, Brittani Fults, Tiffanesha Williams, and Rhodesia McMillian | 4th Annual Black Doctoral Network Conference-Atlanta

2015

“Progressive Politics: Rearticulating Alliance Politics and Utopic Visions” | Association for Humanist Sociologists Annual Meeting-Portland, OR

Women and Crime panel with Katelynn Towne, Rebecca Rodriguez Carey, Kristin McCowan, and Monica Hand | Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Conference | University of Missouri-Columbia

2014

“The Power of Narratives: Justifying Lynching to a Civilized Society” | Research and Creative Activities Forum: Qualitative Research Presentations | University of Missouri-Columbia

2013

“Narratives as an Impetus to Submit to Collective Violence” | Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meeting-Chicago

2009

“Examining the Social Construction of Rationales and Uses of Narratives to Understand the Acceptance of Lynching as a Practice” | Social Problems paper session | Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meeting-Des Moines

Publication Acknowledgements