Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. I study gender and crime, using ethnographic methods to examine how race, social class, and gender intersect to shape women’s vulnerability to violent stranger crime, attitudes toward police, and emotional responses to the threat of violent victimization.

My recent work investigates how anticipating sexual violence in urban public places shapes women’s lives, impacting where women go, where they feel safe, and how they present themselves. In this research area, I have examined how public safety strategies, such as avoiding unlit spaces, paradoxically increase women’s fear of crime. I have also analyzed women’s emotional responses to gendered safety tips produced by urban police forces.

In addition to my central research focus on gender and crime, I write about the process of doing social research. My theoretical work on this topic examines how social science researchers’ assumptions about knowledge and the nature of social reality shape the questions we pose, the answers we find, and the stories we tell about the social world. My applied work uses research approaches such as discourse analysis and thematic content analysis to explore social inequalities in a range of contexts.

My work appears in outlets including the British Journal of Criminology, Violence Against Women, and Women’s Studies International Forum. I have received research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program, the School of Cities, and the Connaught Public Impact program. Prior to joining the Criminology and Criminal Justice faculty at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, I earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto.