Experience

My research training has been shaped by interdisciplinary collaborations across political science, public policy, public health, environmental science, and community-engaged research. During my doctoral studies at UCLA, I conduct fieldwork examining environmental inequality and waste governance in Los Angeles County, documenting patterns of illegal dumping and infrastructure disparities that affect marginalized communities. 

Prior to beginning my Ph.D., I worked on interdisciplinary research projects addressing environmental health and labor conditions, including work with the San Diego State University School of Public Health and the SDSU Research Foundation. In these projects, I worked alongside scholars studying environmental monitoring, heat island effects, and agricultural worker health and safety in Southern California. My undergraduate research at UC Riverside further shaped my scholarly trajectory through independent research on lithium extraction and environmental politics in California’s Imperial Valley and through my work in Professor Kim Yi Dionne’s Publicly Engaged Research Laboratory, where I contributed to projects on public health communication and vaccine attitudes in Ghana and Malawi.

Across these experiences, I have collaborated with scholars from multiple disciplines to investigate how environmental conditions, infrastructure access, and social context shape political and health outcomes in marginalized communities. My research agenda builds on these foundations by examining how environmental harms, governance failures, and unequal public service provision influence political participation, perceptions of the state, and broader patterns of inequality.