My Story.
How we define a social problem makes a huge difference in proposed solutions, for example, framing it as a public health versus a criminal justice issue. My research and teaching focuses on gender and sexuality; environmental sociology; politics and social movements; law and society; health and medicine; race, class, and gender; and qualitative and quantitative research methods.
In my doctoral dissertation research, I analyze the ecosexual movement, a growing transnational grassroots social movement that blends environmental and sexual justice as its starting point. Rather than creating temporary coalitions among single-issue groups, the ecosexual movement begins at the intersection of multiple struggles. My contribution is analyzing the dynamic processes that make an intersectional movement work, for example, focusing on solidarity politics (i.e., the political links that one chooses to make between and among multiple struggles) as well as identity politics (i.e., biological or cultural bases for alliances).
I am working on a follow-up project studying the current U.S. opioid and other drug epidemic including record unintentional overdoses and accidental poisoning deaths. Most research has focused on the problem of prescription painkillers, heroin, and now synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. This project focuses on grassroots community-based organizations in rural areas and small towns that are working toward recovery solutions, beginning with the hard-hit Industrial Midwestern region of Northeast Ohio where I grew up.
On a more personal note, I am a proud mom, grandma, and scholar-activist for social justice. I am driven by a unified vision that reflects my own diverse personal experiences; a vision that recognizes and develops the intersections of multiple inequalities and oppressions.
While growing up, I witnessed a toxic waste incinerator that was cited as a danger to public health and the environment permitted to open next to an elementary school and river floodplain in our economically marginalized community. I remember not understanding how with the massive protests against it, the project was eventually approved anyway. That was my introduction to the intersections of poverty, negative environmental impacts, and disproportionate health risks, or environmental injustice. My experience as a teenage mother in this Appalachian county of Ohio began my quest to understand the intersections of gender, sexual politics, and economic injustices.
The insights I gained through these experiences led me not only to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology, but to work for a program that provided services to economically marginalized teen parents in rural Ohio, conduct interviews with an interdisciplinary team to better understand human impacts on the water supply in Central Florida, engage in nonjudgmental advocacy and outreach for individuals working in adult entertainment and the sex trades in Las Vegas, and help to found an alternative wellness and recovery organization for youth and their families in Akron, Ohio that has since expanded to New Port Richey, Florida.
In my doctoral dissertation research, I analyze the ecosexual movement, a growing transnational grassroots social movement that blends environmental and sexual justice as its starting point. Rather than creating temporary coalitions among single-issue groups, the ecosexual movement begins at the intersection of multiple struggles. My contribution is analyzing the dynamic processes that make an intersectional movement work, for example, focusing on solidarity politics (i.e., the political links that one chooses to make between and among multiple struggles) as well as identity politics (i.e., biological or cultural bases for alliances).
I am working on a follow-up project studying the current U.S. opioid and other drug epidemic including record unintentional overdoses and accidental poisoning deaths. Most research has focused on the problem of prescription painkillers, heroin, and now synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. This project focuses on grassroots community-based organizations in rural areas and small towns that are working toward recovery solutions, beginning with the hard-hit Industrial Midwestern region of Northeast Ohio where I grew up.
On a more personal note, I am a proud mom, grandma, and scholar-activist for social justice. I am driven by a unified vision that reflects my own diverse personal experiences; a vision that recognizes and develops the intersections of multiple inequalities and oppressions.
While growing up, I witnessed a toxic waste incinerator that was cited as a danger to public health and the environment permitted to open next to an elementary school and river floodplain in our economically marginalized community. I remember not understanding how with the massive protests against it, the project was eventually approved anyway. That was my introduction to the intersections of poverty, negative environmental impacts, and disproportionate health risks, or environmental injustice. My experience as a teenage mother in this Appalachian county of Ohio began my quest to understand the intersections of gender, sexual politics, and economic injustices.
The insights I gained through these experiences led me not only to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology, but to work for a program that provided services to economically marginalized teen parents in rural Ohio, conduct interviews with an interdisciplinary team to better understand human impacts on the water supply in Central Florida, engage in nonjudgmental advocacy and outreach for individuals working in adult entertainment and the sex trades in Las Vegas, and help to found an alternative wellness and recovery organization for youth and their families in Akron, Ohio that has since expanded to New Port Richey, Florida.
Photo courtesy of Liam, age 5