Research Interests

Chinese infrastructure development, Caribbean anthropology, racial/ethnic formation, transnationalism, diaspora, nationalism, political economy, postcolonial theory, community organizations/associations, community engagement, critical geography, geographic information systems, critical pedagogy

About Me
I am the Associate Director of Research for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. My research is attuned to questions of racial/ethnic formation, transnationalism, diaspora, and political economy. I have built a robust research portfolio unpacking the enduring legacies of colonialism and racial capitalism in the Caribbean and the US South. While trained as a cultural anthropologist, my research and writing reflect my deep engagement with interdisciplinary scholarship including postcolonial theory, black studies, political theory, and Geographic Information Systems Analysis.

My primary research explores the impacts of PRC (People’s Republic of China) expansion in the Caribbean. My book project, Hybrid Diasporas in the Age of Rising China: Tracing Contestations of China’s Presence in the Caribbean , utilizes ethnography, historical analysis, and postcolonial theory to examine the extension of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI-China’s re-construction of the silk route) into Jamaica through the lens of multi-racial Chinese Jamaican community organizations. Additionally, I serve as the Caribbean and Latin American editor for the People's Map of Global China.

Community engagement is central to both my research and my praxis. I was the founding director of the Brush Arbor Community Engaged Field Program, a 3-year National Endowment of the Humanities funded program to digitally preserve a historic African American cemetery in Starkville, MS while training advanced-undergraduate and graduate students how to preserve African American sites through a community-based restorative model. I continue this work through my role as Associate Director of Research at Kirwan, a community-engaged research institute. 

My scholarship has been supported by several awards, grants, and fellowships. My graduate degree was supported by a Ronald E. McNair Fellowship. My research has been awarded research grants from Fulbright Hays and the Coordinating Council for Women in History. In 2020, I was a Fellow at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. As an Associate Professor at Mississippi State University I was the recipient of the 2023 nomination for the Mississippi IHL (Institute of Higher Learning) Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award as well as a Community Engaged Learning Fellowship in 2022.  In AY2022-2023 I was sponsored by the American Anthropological Association to complete the Op-Ed Project “Write to Change the World” program.