Featured Research

My project looks at the global waste trade and the ways in which recycling markets are governed in Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, and throughout East and Central Africa. My work is concerned with how waste markets fuse with existing metal supply chains and the ways in which local and global political economies are smelted…

Under the imperative of climate change mitigation, cities and states are increasingly calling for the electrification of energy demand, including transport, industry and homes. Yet, with economic, racial and spatial inequities deeply embedded in cities, the clean energy transition will not benefit everyone equally, unless we systematically create opportunities for vulnerable communities to meaningfully participate in…

The innovations of micro-mobility—a category of low-speed, short-distanced, and lightweight vehicles that are sharable and increasingly powered by electricity—have disrupted the transportation landscape worldwide, boosting the sharing economy and gig platform markets. However, comprised of open modes (e.g., motorcycle and bicycle), micro-mobility exposes its users directly to higher degrees of on-road environmental hazards, such as…

Despite the scarcity of the literature, gentrification studies have viewed the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer) population from a certain narrative–as either bellwethers or victims of gentrification. On one hand, LGBTQ populations are viewed as the harbingers of more tolerant, diverse neighborhoods whose unique placemaking beckons the influx of younger and middle-class gentrifiers in…

California’s Central Valley holds a unique space in the larger state’s history, particularly in its relationship to race, space, and policing. With Highways 99 and 41 acting as fault lines, police continue to maintain urban apartheid in the Valley as fully naturalized parts of the sociospatial landscape. Particularly in Fresno, the Central Valley’s largest city,…

Residential building electrification – the process of transitioning homes from using fossil fuels to using electricity for space and water heating – is increasingly foregrounded in climate change mitigation policy in Northern California, where my research is based, and beyond. With this foregrounding of building electrification has come demands for and discussions of equitable electrification…

During the 2000s commodities boom, the fast-paced expansion of resource extraction and large-scale farming transformed the hinterlands of countries of the global South — including the rapid growth of smaller towns. By taking up the case of Brazil, where small and mid-sized cities have been growing at significantly higher rates than the national average in…

Across cities, street vendors work under intense economic and social uncertainties. Mexico City is not an exception, with a long history of social and political conflicts revolving around the regulation and use of public space. The purpose of my research is twofold: 1) to understand how street vendors claim their use of public space in…