ABOUT

I am a sociocultural and medical anthropologist but when I first got to college I did not even know what anthropology was. It was Millsaps College in Jackson, MS where I first fell in love with the discipline that would shape the rest of my life, and it was also during my time at Millsaps that I received my first invitation to do research in Albania. That time was incredibly formative for me and made me want to be a professional student but since that was not quite possible, becoming a professor was the next best thing! 

I am an ethnographer, a writer, a scholar who is constantly trying to understand people and how they are situated in the world; I am infinitely curious about how people respond to the social world around them. My research has primarily focused on Central and Eastern Europe and the U.S. South, but my publications and courses explore global questions in multifaceted ways. I am the author of Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife, which is based on many years of intensive research in Southeast Europe. You can find my other publications in such journals as Slavic Review, Medical Anthropology, and Current Anthropology. My research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the School for Advanced Research, the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the Fulbright Program among others. 

I teach courses on race and racialization, nationalism, the anthropology of health and illness, anthropological methods, and ethnographic writing.

And please stay tuned for future writing projects coming soon!