I am a sociologist of race and U.S. empire. Combining postcolonial methodologies, comparative historical methods, and critical Indigenous studies with theories of race and racism, my research analyzes race through the material and cultural processes of empire.

My book project, Whiteness at the Edges of Empire demonstrates how racialization reorients politics in ways that reinforce the power of the empire-state. During key periods of settler colonial expansion in Virginia and Hawai'i, settler colonists consistently used whiteness as a shorthand for loyalty to the empire-state. They did so while working to rule over various populations, though they enacted contradictory racial policies, and often imagined divergent imperial futures. 

I received my Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Virginia in 2022. I am currently a Black Beyond Data postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a Council on Library and Information Resources postdoctoral fellow. My research can be found in Political Power and Social Theory and Sociology Compass. I am also the managing editor for the journal Humanity and Society.

Image above:  USN - U.S. Navy photo 80-G-182880; also U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.488.029.028