Education

2015-2020

PhD, Dual-title, Geography and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

The Pennsylvania State University

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2008-2010

MS Geography

Portland State University

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2004-2007

BS Business Management

Oregon Institute of Technology

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Research

My research agenda centers on rural communities' adaptive response to environmental change with a focus on agricultural and coastal livelihoods. I center the role of multi-scalar power dynamics and social difference in understanding adaptive choices among rural communities.

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My current research, in partnership with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, examines agriculturalists' adaptive soil management decisions in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. The study also examines the knowledge sources that agriculturalists draw on in making those decisions, and how climate models and data can better reflect farmer knowledge and better meet their needs. Methods employed include interviews, participatory mapping, focus groups, and modeling with the Community Land Model. 

 

Past research has examined the racialized dimensions of land dispossession and environmental risk for Indigenous and Afro-descendant Costa Ricans in the country's Caribbean Talamanca canton. This work included eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork, 60 interviews, 250 household surveys, and geospatial land cover analysis. 

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I am also involved in a collaborative project to understand the social dimensions of sustainability in the beef industry in the U.S. Other past research projects have explored the gendered dimensions of livelihood change in mining communities, as well as the networks of food imports between Peru and the United States. I have also written about creative feminist research methodologies.