B.A. Anthropology, Connecticut College
M.E.S. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University
Ph.D. Geography, University of California, Berkeley

I believe students interested in the relationships among culture, power, and political and economic change should have a broad training in theories and methods to question, for example such couplings as place and identity, nature and culture, local and global, market and state. Once students are grounded in political, economic, historical and performative approaches to help them understand the world, I ask them to use their knowledge as a tool for action. I ask my students not only to learn anthropology, geography, or cultural studies; I ask them to become ethnographers, geographers, and writers in my classroom. I want them to question the everyday practices and ideas that produce our own common sense understanding of the world, and critically evaluate the assumptions and beliefs that underpin conventional wisdom.

I attempt to create a student-centered classroom in which student interests, experience, and knowledge help determine how to approach course material to collectively learn about the subject. At the end of a course I want students to have their own understanding of the topics and questions explored, what is interesting about them, and why understanding them is important to their lives. I want students to think and act critically, understanding that their everyday actions are intimately linked to the issues we study, no matter how abstract or distant they may first appear.

My research engages political questions and theoretical debates, contributing to scholarship on 1) the cultural politics of the environment, 2) political economy of development, and 3)the post-colonial state. I have published in edited book volumes and peer reviewed journals about gender and development, land rights and transnational investment, and the links between community, landscapes, and activism. Through ethnographic research on the transnational and trans-local aspects of development, my work brings to light the grounded struggles that give shape to so-called global phenomena.