ABOUT

I am an interdisciplinary scholar engaged in research on social movements, race, community studies, public history, and Black archives. 

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. I have served as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, and as a Social Science Research Council-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Fellow. I received my M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and my undergraduate degrees in English-Creative Writing and Sociology from the University of Southern California. 

+Check out my recent appearance on the podcast Flatbush + Main, speaking about the police killing of Crown Heights community leader Arthur Miller in 1978. 

+Listen to oral history clips from Home + Belonging

+Listen to my past appearances on Reconnaissance, talking about the historic 18th century free Black community of Weeksville; and musings on rebellion, race, and Black identity in Brooklyn on Third Rail

PUBLICATIONS

My forthcoming book is titled To Fulfill These Rights: Political Contention Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions in Public Universities (Columbia University Press). My work also appears in Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change; Issues in Race and Society: An Interdisciplinary Global Journal, and work under review at City & Community. 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Social Movements, Race and Ethnicity, Intersectionality, Urban Sociology, Qualitative Methods, Black Politics, Ethnography, Oral History, Public History, Black Archives. View my faculty page here

Community engagement

I am the former Co-Coordinator of Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change. Previously, I served as the Oral Historian at Weeksville Heritage Center and the Project Coordinator of the Voices of Crown Heights Oral History Project at Brooklyn Historical Society. Always working in the service of a better world, I have worked in organizations such as Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, The Brecht Forum, Brooklyn Movement Center, and the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.