I’m a sociologist, writer, and incurably curious person.

I’m currently a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I study the wonderfully strange ways people create meaning together. My research explores identity, grief, memory, symbolic interaction, and the stories people tell about themselves and one another. Along the way, I’ve somehow become professionally interested in everything from ghost stories and Ouija boards to roller derby, Fallout fanfiction, historic buildings, and little artifacts of social life all around me.

Before sociology found me, I spent years working as a journalist, radio producer, and communications specialist. Looking back, I realize I was asking sociological questions long before I had the vocabulary for them. Journalism taught me to ask good questions. Sociology taught me why those questions mattered.

I believe some of the most interesting sociology is hiding in ordinary places: museums, cemeteries, internet fandoms, roadside attractions, family stories, thrift stores, and conversations with friends. This website is where I collect those observations, share my research, and occasionally wander down an unexpected rabbit hole.

When I’m not writing or teaching, you’ll probably find me exploring Wyoming history, reading far too much about Victorian Spiritualism, designing museum exhibits, playing Fallout, making playlists for fictional characters, or convincing unsuspecting friends that symbolic interactionism explains far more of everyday life than they ever imagined.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you find something here that makes you look at the social world a little differently.