Department of Sociology

Originally from a rural town in North Carolina, I received my B.S. in sociology and minor in Global Studies from Appalachian State University in 2018. In my undergraduate thesis, I examined teacher burnout as a potential consequence of discrepancies between teachers’ attitudes toward their responsibilities and the conflicting emotion norms to which teachers are held. Prior to attending Indiana University, I spent a year as an elementary school substitute teacher in Indiana. My current research interests span the intersections between culture, education, inhabited institutionalism in organizations, interactions in medical contexts, and social psychological studies of emotions and identity. My methodological interests include abductive analysis, interviewing, and ethnography. As a working-class and first-generation college graduate, I am also passionate about issues of cultural capital and stigma in the education system.