I am a sociologist of work and economic life, higher education, young adulthood, and culture. I recently completed a PhD in Sociology at Harvard University and am now a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University.

My research agenda broadly foregrounds how people experience uncertainty and grapple with unexpected difficulties or conflicting beliefs, a topic of importance in a world unsettled by growing employment and economic insecurity, changing views of the value of education, rising inequality, and political turmoil.

My cross-national, comparative dissertation examines the experiences of young people facing insecurity—that is, employment precarity or economic instability— in spite of their high educational attainment, which is socially linked to status and has historically been seen as protecting against insecurity. I examine how young college graduates in the United States and Spain interpret insecurity in their contexts, understand their social positions and worth, imagine their futures, and strategize to escape insecurity. One stand-alone paper from this dissertation is forthcoming; another is currently under review.

My research, including work published at Work and Occupations and RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, forthcoming at Sociology of Education, provisionally accepted at Administrative Science Quarterly, and invited to revise and resubmit at Sociology of Education, also demonstrates an underlying interest in examining how people use cultural tools, and particularly narratives, to resolve tensions between seemingly conflicting ideas or beliefs. Moreover, other research, including work published at The British Journal of Sociology, reveals a consistent interest in the role of culture in shaping American political engagement, particularly in tumultuous political contexts.

I primarily draw on in-depth interview methods, supplemented by experiments, computational text analysis, and survey analysis. Much of my research takes a cross-national comparative perspective. Across projects, I seek to understand and explain the persistence of social inequalities.

I earned a B.A. in Sociology with Honors and English with Honors at Stanford University and an A.M. in Sociology and a PhD in Sociology at Harvard University. Before graduate school, I taught high school in Spain through the Fulbright Program.