I am a social scientist whose research spans cultural sociology, phenomenology, medical sociology, the sociology of the senses, and race. I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at James Madison University.

My current book project, Enlightenment or Madness, examines how people who confront similar sensory-perceptual destabilizations come to interpret these states through distinct cultural worldviews, in particular medical or spiritual lenses.