When I started my research journey in undergrad, I was confused how my peers blamed raped victims for their experience of violence. It turned into a funded undergraduate research project where over 130 college students received a sexual violence prevention and bystander training. This evolved into my Master’s thesis where I looked to understand how campus leadership, committed to sexual violence prevention, hit consistent roadblocks while trying to implement policies and practices that would support victims of sexual violence.

I was the first student at George Mason University to earn a dual Master’s Degree in Sociology and Women & Gender Studies, I learned during that time I am invested in social change. For a while I said I was a scholar interested in social inequality and intersectionality. However, I understand now I have always been interested in power. Who has it, who shapes it, how it shifts, and how it is used to solidify and undermine structures of domination.

I played a pivotal role in an NSF funded grant to understand non-binary gender identities and wrote a paper arguing that while identity labels, and recognition of those labels, can further experiences of oppression in our society, I found non-binary people were liberating themselves from the confines of the gender binary through the understanding of their own experience with gender. I argue that this liberation is a fundamental part of understanding how structures like gender can be undermined by marginalized communities.

My current research focuses on queer/trans disabled BIPOC who have been historically described as powerless through their oppression and marginalization in sociology. I am curious how people who hold identities that cause them to experience oppression and violence at a concentrated level leverage power for social change and in the fight for liberation.