I am currently a PhD student working with Dr. Joshua Inwood. I am a human geographer who is interested broadly on the uneven racial contours of urban space.
I am currently exploring this theme through two related questions. The first question asks how can we understand the current proliferation of streetcar development in cities across the U.S. as both a crystallization of racially differentiated urban development practices and a node of anti-racist, anti-capitalist contestation? Understanding the role of light rail in the history of anti-racist social movements, this project looks to draw this legacy into the present to examine how we can understand public transportation as more broadly representative of unequal urban geographies and resistance against them.
The second project attempts to join energy geographies with Black Geographies and Black studies. The transition from an energy system dependent on fossil fuels to renewable sources will require a fundamental transformation of the economic and political status quo. This opens the possibility for an energy future that is anti-colonial and anti-racist. Drawing on Black geographic thought, this project attempts to envision how treating race as a primary axis of inequality might alter theorizations of just energy transitions.
Prior to studying at Penn State, I received my MS in Geography at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and my BA at Ohio State University in Political Science.