about

I have a Phd in Comparative Human Development from the University of Chicago, where I am currently a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Comparative Human Development and with the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.  In 2023-24, I will teach the undergraduate courses "Topics in Medical Anthropology: Troubling Adolescence," and "Treating Trans-: Practicing of Medicine, Practice of Theory", while also serving as the BA preceptor for  students writing theses in Gender and Sexuality Studies. 

I also hold an MA in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago, a BA from the Evergreen State College, and an AA from Tacoma Community College.




scholarship

As an interdisciplinary ethnographer of medicine and gender, I draw from the disciplines of medical anthropology and sociology, transgender studies, and feminist science studies to understand how gendered futures are imagined and cultivated through medical and public health interventions. 


My first book project, Practicing Gender, tracks how gender affirming medicine is understood and utilized by providers, youth, and their families in the contemporary United States. In the book, I use the concepts of "prevention" and "potential" to articulate the ethical and temporal orientations which shape current approaches to gendered intervention. Through clinical participant observation, interviews with experts and youth, as well as analysis of clinical research on gender care, Practicing Gender describes the interrelated logics of gender, temporality, and knowledge that structure contemporary practices of gender affirming medicine.  In 2023, Practicing Gender was awarded the Richard Saller Prize from the University of Chicago, which recognizes the most outstanding dissertation of the year across the division of social sciences.  


My research has been supported by a University of Chicago Social Science/Mellon Foundation Dissertation Grant, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, the Robert Lemelson Foundation/Society for Psychological Anthropology, and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago.