Hi, I am a bilingual environmental sociologist. Using qualitative methods, I connect large-scale processes – like disasters, deindustrialization, and green energy shifts – to individuals’ subjectivities, decisions, and behaviors. 

My current book project titled After Fire, Where Is Home? is based on an ethnographic study in the McKenzie River Valley in Oregon after the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire. I explore how the wildfire survivors reestablished their home in relation to the place and the types of housing they chose to live in after the fire. I develop the notion of “environmental boundary”, based on the empowerment self-defense strategy of boundary setting practiced in gender-based violence prevention. 

In another project, I explore the international dimensions of just transitions through an examination of the phase out of coal mining in Mainland China.  This research builds upon previous research in which I explored the relationship between unfair labor conditions and environmental hazards through an ethnographic study of coal miners in Mainland China in 2019, which was published in Society and Natural Resources. 

I teach introductory and specialty courses such as Sociology of Well-Being, Disasters and Everyday Life, and have organized a speakers' series on Envisioning REAL Ecotopias. I also teach Empowerment Self-Defense, a trauma informed approach to self-defense that empowers people to stop assaults in their very early stages. 

I am currently a Mellon Postdoc in the Environment and Sustainability (ENSP) program at the College of William and Mary in the Commonwealth of Virginia.