Biography

I received a PhD in Demography and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, where I was an affiliated student at the Max Planck Research School for Population, Health, and Data Science in Rostock, Germany.  I also hold a Master in Public Policy with a Graduate Certificate in Applied Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA in International Relations and Economic Development from Tufts University.  

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My research lies at the intersection of population health, mortality, and public policy, focused on how social and policy contexts shape the lives and deaths of individuals across the United States. I am particularly interested in leveraging demographic and statistical methods to explore how the relationships between place, health, and mortality vary across multiple intersectional axes of social stratification, such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age. 

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My recent work explores the political landscape of death in the United States, including work on the unequal impact of local carceral contexts on mortality among Black and White populations, as well as a series of studies that investigate the uneven mortality and longevity consequences of increases state policy polarization within the United States. I have also published extensively on the contoured geography of health and mortality within the United States, including a variety of projects investigating spatial, racial, age, and cause of death variation in mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a project exploring the role of state eviction bans in mitigating the pandemic's mental health costs and another examining historical and geographic trends in Black male and female life expectancy. Other prior work has looked at the unequal burden of state policy and institutional contexts on the wellbeing of families and children, including a comprehensive review of homeschooling policies and child maltreatment evidence and an analysis of state-driven family intervention risks for children.

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My work has appeared in Demography, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of Health and Social Behavior,  SSM-Population Health,  JAMA Network Open, PLOS ONE, Science Advances, Child Abuse and Neglect, and Children and Youth Services Review.