I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology and Mellon Cluster Fellow in science studies at Northwestern University. My research is concerned with the tensions between democracy and expertise.

In my dissertation, I study how the statistical tool of meta-analysis shapes contentious policy debates. My empirical cases include surgery (the subject of my recent paper in Sociology of Health & Illness), global health, and the US federal courts. I argue that actors in these domains use meta-analysis to transform social conflicts into statistical one, enacting what I call “p-value politics.”

My earlier work focused on clashes between health social movements and biomedical experts. In my 2023 Social Studies of Science paper, I introduce the concept of the “routinization” of lay expertise to explain how a group of biohackers came to collaborate with the credentialed experts whom they once rebuked. And in my 2020 Social Studies of Science paper, I demonstrate how contemporary HIV/AIDS activists challenged epidemiologists’ 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.