About Me
ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGIST
Indigenous governance, environmental policy, and collaborative research
Research
I am an environmental anthropologist. My work examines how people relate to land, kin, and more-than-human worlds, and how these relationships shape governance, responsibility, and environmental practice.
For nearly ten years, I have worked alongside the Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó community of A’Ukre in Brazil’s Amazon-Cerrado region, with research focused on relational governance, Indigenous environmental knowledge, gendered authority, cultural burning, and conservation politics.
I earned my PhD in Anthropology and MA in Applied Anthropology from the University of Maryland, with graduate work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. My master’s research examined Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó cultural burning in the Brazilian Cerrado and how these practices shape biodiversity and respond to environmental change. My dissertation, Unsettling Gender and Ownership: Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó Menire and Relational Governance, examines how Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó women enact political authority through everyday and ceremonial practices of care, stewardship, and responsibility.
Field-based Teaching & Collaboration
My relationship with A’Ukre began through an ethnographic field course: I first attended as an undergraduate in 2014 and later returned to help co-direct and coordinate the program. That experience continues to shape my teaching, where I emphasize field-based learning, community accountability, and research practices grounded in long-term relationships. I also contribute to this work through The A’Ukre Project, a long-term partnership supporting research, education, and community collaboration.
Training & Experience
I earned my BA in Anthropology, with a minor in Geography, from Arizona State University. As an undergraduate, I trained in qualitative methods with the Culture, Health, and Environment Lab and in archaeological data analysis with the Calixtlahuaca Archaeological Project.
In a previous life, I worked in concert promotion and venue management. That experience still shapes how I work. It taught me how to coordinate complex logistics, manage competing priorities, communicate across very different groups, and keep things moving when conditions are unpredictable.
Across research, teaching, and public-facing work, I aim to make environmental scholarship more accountable to the communities, landscapes, and relationships it depends on. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, where everyday family life is much less structured than my research.
Get in touch
Reach out about research collaborations, teaching, speaking, or public-facing environmental work.