My research exists at the exciting intersections of burgeoning sociological inquiry connected to contemporary families, sex, gender, and bodies. I completed my Ph.D. in Sociology and Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies in 2009 at the University of Michigan, where I received interdisciplinary mixed-methods training in the social sciences and humanities.

My work on women's partnerships with transgender and transsexual men considers social actors' disruption of sociolegal notions of identities, bodies, and families. The families and relationships these partners co-create often cannot be neatly conceptualized as either same-sex or opposite-sex using existing social typologies. I also study fat-acceptance advocates and activists in the era of the obesity epidemic to explore how weight management attempts, and disclosures about these attempts, simultaneously reflect and fissure notions of responsible social citizenship, health, and sociopolitical group membership. 

My previous work includes collaborative research examining Americans' beliefs about the potential genetic etiology of perceived gender, race, class, and sexual orientation differences and their associations with beliefs about the existence of group-directed prejudice, discrimination, and social inequalities.