I am a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University. I research urban housing development and maternal health in the States and South Africa. I use a blend of humanistic, interdisciplinary, and ethnographic approaches. My work examines the development of segregated housing from a historical lens considering eras such as apartheid and Jim Crow. Living in each country, I have worked alongside maternal health organizations asking how living environments affect maternal health. I explore how not only, generationally, but spatially, housing perpetuates health inequalities.

Additionally, I study how maternal health organizations and birthing support contribute to women’s health and well-being. Specifically, I am interested in how this support may offset the violence and oppression women experience medically and environmentally. Another aspect of my work investigates empowerment, imaginative resilience, and transcendence. I explore realties that exist beyond one’s physical and spacial reality.