I’m honored to be recognized with the 2020 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the faculty of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. We celebrated at our end of semester department Zoom party. Thank you!
My research focuses on urban imaginaries, neoliberalism, and spectacle in global cities. My dissertation explores how global cities use mega-events like the Olympic Games as image-making projects, turning spectacle and legacies into a development program. Using case studies of Los Angeles 1984 and the Boston and Los Angeles bids for 2024, I study how elite driven Olympic bids were transformed into benefit producers to solve urban problems. I also show how this transformation opened space for resistance and anti-bid campaigns to create counter-legacies to debate the future of the city. This project brings together history, the contestation of institutional legacy discourse, and resistance, to uncover how people shape the future of their city.
In my teaching, students learn how to think critically about their social worlds. Through writing, discussion, and creative projects, students learn how to understand the organization of their communities and how they can take action to build a better world.
PhD Sociology, 2021
Northeastern University
MA Sociology, 2016
Northeastern University
MS Environmental Studies, 2014
Antioch University New England
BS Community and International Development, 2008
University of Vermont
I’m honored to be recognized with the 2020 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the faculty of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. We celebrated at our end of semester department Zoom party. Thank you!
I was this month’s graduate instructor spotlight in the newsletter of CATLR, the Northeastern University teaching center. I was interviewed about how I started teaching, my research, and guiding students to look at things in new ways. You can read my whole interview here.
Exploring the discursive framework of ‘event legacy’ in the bid and planning for LA1984 and LA2028, and how it shapes the future of the city.