I use the power of cultural production to support urban sustainability, public health, and collective care. Trained as an interdisciplinary ethnographer, I think across institutional divides and locations to develop collaborative international cultural projects.

I am currently an independent consultant, collaborating with Wellcome on cultural programming at the intersection of their priorities on climate and health. Previously based at CUNY’s Center for the Humanities, I served as the New York lead for Canopy, Wellcome’s sciences and arts festival on climate and health; and the New York lead for Mindscapes, Wellcome’s international cultural program on mental health. With collaborators in New York and beyond, I work to develop artist residencies, exhibitions, performances, articles, and events that support a transformation in how we understand, address and talk about health. 

As a Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York, I co-curated the exhibitions Germ City: Microbes and the Metropolis and Urban Indian: Native New York Now. I was a contributing curator on City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York. 

Previously, I worked at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst on a nationwide ethnographic study of retirement insecurity and economic inequality. For that project, I completed and analyzed 260 qualitative interviews, conducted secondary research, and organized the structure of each chapter in the resulting book, Downhill from Here.

I completed my PhD in American Studies at Yale University, where I taught undergraduate courses in urban studies and public humanities. My dissertation used ethnographic interviews, historical documentation, and spatial analysis to assess competing definitions of environmental justice and sustainable development along Brooklyn’s waterfront.