My substantive interests are in the sociology of evaluation and the sociology of education. In my work, I ask: What happens when we try to unwind meritocracy? Rationalised evaluative practices, such as standardised tests and rankings, are the cultural machinery sustaining modern meritocracies. While they have developed in the name of fairness and neutrality, scholarship on quantification has argued that they can both generate and legitimate inequalities. 

My research examines recent challenges to such evaluative practices. I ask how stakeholders cope with such challenges, and with what implications for inequality. I specialise in in-depth interviews, using these to account for the broad empirical patterns that I describe using quantitative data. Informed by cultural sociology, my work calls attention to the narratives and scripts that shape how actors evaluate quality and form beliefs about their evaluation systems.

Most of my work focuses on the education system in Singapore, where I grew up and where I am now based.

My work has been funded by a National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship.