I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology and Mellon Cluster Fellow in science studies at Northwestern University. My work is concerned with the tensions between democracy and expertise. In my dissertation, I study how surgeons (the subject of my recent paper in Sociology of Health & Illness), global health NGOs, and judges use the statistical method of meta-analysis to settle contentious debates. In their reliance on meta-analysis, these actors transform social conflicts into statistical ones, enacting what I call “p-value politics.”

In earlier work, I focused on the clashes between health social movements and biomedical experts. In my 2023 Social Studies of Science paper, I explain how a group of people with type 1 diabetes who engineered an open-source artificial pancreas “routinized” their lay expertise. And in my 2020 Social Studies of Science paper, I demonstrate how contemporary HIV/AIDS activists challenged clinical researchers’ definition of being “at risk” for HIV.

My research is funded by the National Science Foundation and Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. I was recently interviewed by Northwestern’s TGS Spotlight.