I’m an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where I am also a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Policy Research.  

My work is located at the intersection of inequality and political economy, with focuses on economic insecurity, credit and debt, social policy, and financial shocks. 

One stream of research focuses on how differences in US state political and policy contexts shape inequality and insecurity. One paper (published in the American Journal of Sociology) looks at both the determinants of state-level protections for debtors, and their consequences for economic insecurity. Another paper studies how US state political and policy environments differentially moderate the relationship between financial shocks and insecurity in households (R&R at Social Forces).

Another stream of research focuses on credit card debt. One project draws on qualitative interview data to study medical shocks and healthcare affordability. The first paper from this project (published at Social Science & Medicine) focuses on medical debt, finding that the types of debt used to finance medical care are more complicated than just past due bills. In other collaborative work, I also study student loan debt (one manuscript at Social Currents), credit card debt, and government credit ratings (one manuscript at Sociological Forum).

Before starting my current position, I was the Frank H.T. Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell University Population Center. In 2022, I earned my PhD from the department of sociology at The Ohio State University, where I was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow. I received my MA in sociology from Ohio State in 2017, and my BS in political science and international affairs from Florida State University in 2014. ​