I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky's Martin School of Public Policy and Administration. I also hold a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology and am a research affiliate at the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and completed postdoctoral research at Cornell University.
My research focuses on housing, families, and poverty and inequality. I am currently writing book (under advance contract with Princeton University Press) that uses data from repeated, in-depth interviews to explore how families with children come to live in doubled-up households and how these arrangements shape their daily lives and residential trajectories. Other projects examine residential decision-making, housing instability, and family and child well-being.
My research has been published in Social Forces, Demography, Social Problems, City & Community, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Public Administration Review. My work has received support from the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Penn Social Science & Policy Forum, Harvard Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy, and the MacArthur Foundation. I have received awards from the Society for the Study of Social Problems Poverty, Class, and Inequality Division and Family Division and was a finalist for an American Sociological Association Family Section award.
At the University of Kentucky, I have taught or am teaching courses in quantitative methods, equity in public policy, and methods of program evaluation (in-person and online asynchonous).
I was a first-generation college student and received a BA magna cum laude with a sociology and anthropology major from Carleton College. I also hold a Master of Public Affairs from the La Follette School at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Before graduate school, I spent a year in AmeriCorps working at Caritas of Austin as a case manager for people facing homelessness.