About me

I am an ethnographer specializing in identity, politics, and inequality. My research studies processes of belonging and systems of in/exclusion across multiple axes of identity in everyday life. Interdisciplinary by nature, my work sits as the intersection of race and ethnicity, immigration, political sociology, gender, secularism, and aging and the life course.

My dissertation, Growing Old with the Nation: Aging, Belonging, and the Politics of Exclusion, is an ethnographic study of how dominant-group seniors in Québec make sense of their place in the nation and respond to demographic and cultural change. Based on 12 months of participant observation, 30 life-history interviews, and 9 focus groups in a diversifying region of Québec (pseudonym: “Versailles”), I show how ethnonationalism functions as an affective resource in later life. Reproducing dominant identities—rooted in whiteness, Francophoneness, and cultural Catholicism—helps seniors navigate the emotional challenges of getting old.

My research is published in Gender & Society and Ethnic and Racial Studies, and I have a Revise & Resubmit at the British Journal of Sociology. I’ve also written book reviews for the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and International Migration Review. My work has been supported by awards and fellowships from the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et Culture (FRQSC), the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA), the Munk School of Global Affairs, and the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto.

Beyond my research, I have taught both introductory and advanced undergraduate courses, including Intermediate Qualitative Methods (SOC254) and Special Topics: Nation-Making in the West (SOC495) at the University of Toronto, and Integrative Research Seminar at Dawson College. My teaching praxis is informed by humanizing the educational experience and de- mystifying the hidden curriculum—values I care deeply about as a first-generation scholar.