ABOUT

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, with appointments in the Department of Sociology graduate program and School of the Environment at the University of Toronto St. George. Broadly I study social inequality, health, and the environment. I use interviews, ethnography, and archives to examine scientific controversies on the health effects of environmental chemical exposure. Currently I study U.S. regulatory frameworks to understand the social production of knowledge and ignorance. My research and teaching are shaped by critical race theory, environmental justice, science and technology studies, and environmental sociology. 

I have published in Environmental Sociology, Environmental Health, Environmental Science & Technology, Social Studies of Science, Organization & Environment, the American Journal of Public Health, and Sociological Perspectives. In 2016, I co-founded the Racial Equity Task Force for the American Sociological Association Section on Environmental Sociology, co-organized the 2018 Bridging the Gap: Race and Environment Conference at Temple University, and guest co-edited a special collection on race and the environment for Environmental Sociology. From 2019-2021 I provided expert testimony in hearings on bills related to chemical regulation in the Rhode Island State House.

Prior to joining the University of Toronto, I was an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2018, I received a Leadership Grant from the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, spending a year as a research fellow at the Silent Spring Institute and Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University. Between M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, I worked at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment in California, and taught at the University of San Francisco. I study and practice anti-racist mindful facilitation, and had the opportunity to train with Rainbow Markell and Lee Mun Wah in Berkeley, CA from 2016-2018. I served on the board of directors at Alternatives for Community and the Environment (ACE) from 2013-2017, and was a member of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Chapters in Boston and Rhode Island. I am a current member of SURJ Toronto.