I am currently a NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers University.  I received my PhD in sociology from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst in September 2009.

My research and teaching interests include medical sociology, health and healthcare organization, care work, symbolic interaction, emotions, race, and qualitative methodology.  My CV is here.

I am a broadly trained sociologist who seeks to understand the inner workings of social institutions.  I am finishing a book, Their Loss is Our Gain: Care, Work, and Emotions in Nursing Homes, based on my dissertation, which was funded by an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant.  The book connects the financial and regulatory structure of healthcare in the United States to the emotional lives of nursing home care workers.  Based on comparative, ethnographic research in two nursing homes - one part of a large, for-profit chain, the other part of a small, non-profit chain - I show how nursing home care workers grapple with tensions between meeting organizational demands in an increasingly market driven field and providing compassionate care in times of personal crisis.  My next project will examine the implementation of multidisciplinary healthcare teams in hospitals.