I am a Lecturer in the UC-Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies.
I research agrarian change in Asia drawing on critical development studies, political ecology, and cultural geography. Based on long-term ethnography, my current work foregrounds issues of history, place, and (in)security to understand the uneven geographies of development in rural China under state-led agricultural modernization.
My research has been supported by the S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellowships, the UC-Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources, the Fulbright US Student Program, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the Confucius China Studies Program, the UC Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources, and the Chester-Fritz Endowment.
I hold a BA with high honors from the University of California at Berkeley. From 2003-2005, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Romania. After receiving a MA in China Studies from the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies, I worked as a research associate for three years at the Seattle-based non-profit Landesa. In 2019 I was a Visiting Scholar in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. I received my PhD from the University of Washington’s Department of Geography in 2020.