Research

My scholarship centers on the study of young people’s identity projects, the ways in which individuals construct, manage, and present public versions of the self in everyday life. In my empirical research, I investigate how young people interpret and navigate socially risky behaviors, such as passing and sexting, as well as socially risky contexts, including sports tragedies and ghost encounters. By analyzing these practices and experiences, I seek to illuminate the cultural frameworks and social processes through which meaning, identity, and belonging are produced and contested.

My work has appeared in the pages of Symbolic Interaction, Deviant Behavior, Sociology of Sport Journal, Fat Studies, and Appalachian Journal, as well as in several handbooks that contribute to the fields of social psychology, gender and race studies, and cultural analysis. I am also the co-author, with Jocelyn A. Hollander and Judith A. Howard, of Gendered Situations, Gendered Selves: A Gender Lens on Social Psychology, a text that advances a framework for understanding the interplay between gender and social interaction.

In recent years, my research has expanded into the field of public history. Through oral histories and archival work, I have examined topics ranging from the social and cultural impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the institutional history of Wells College to the heritage and significance of mountain horses of Appalachia. This interdisciplinary turn reflects my broader commitment to documenting the lived experiences of communities and to highlighting the ways in which people create meaning and sustain collective memory through stories of identity, place, and belonging.