I enjoy thinking about the connections and relationships between race and space, particularly rural spaces and how the intersection of race and space contribute to many broad themes in sociology.  As a social movement scholar I am also interested in understanding contemporary Black resistance movements and have focused extensively on Black Lives Matter since 2016.  After 2020, I began to focus on the Environmental Justice Movement in rural space, specifically eastern, North Carolina.  As a researcher, I focused on mapping the components of a rural-based movement.  Relying on Aldon Morris' conceptualization of "local movement centers"  in the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, as my theoretical framework, I sought to determine if the components critical to the success of a local movement center were still at play currently in rural, predominantly Black communities.  As a volunteer community organizer, I served primarily to disseminate information to rural communities to empower them to advocate on their behalf as they challenged industrial and agricultural polluters.  

My dissertation identifies and traces some of the diverse paths within social movement spaces that power dynamics manifest. Specifically, I ask the following three questions. What do participants in Black Lives Matter reveal about the movement and internal power dynamics? How does power manifest itself in public hearing spaces? How do Black people living in the rural South engage in the Environmental Justice Movement? Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis, I investigate, analyze, and interrogate the various pathways of power within movement spaces. I find that participants in local Black Lives Matter chapters negotiate power through their activist identity, local residents can be rendered illegitimate because they do not speak the language of those in power even though they have the power to participate in public hearing spaces.  Finally, there is a shift from indigenous funding sources within rural, Black communities which potentially disempowers those communities from advocacy and engagement.   

In my free time, I enjoy learning new things, creative writing, reading, travelling nationally and abroad, and spending time with my family and friends.