Assistant Professor of Anthropology (PhD UCLA, 2008)
Much of my work explores the relationship between language, material culture, and politics, with a particular emphasis on how these domains intersect with human experience. As a linguistic anthropologist, my main research interests sit at the intersection of design — as both a cultural category and a social process — and the study of face-to-face interaction, including both verbal and non-verbal language. I’ve worked closely with architects in Los Angeles and product designers in Stockholm, Sweden, where I look at the sociocultural construction of an ideological continuity between everyday things (think furniture) and social democratic political values.
In addition to my research on design and social interaction, I am (or have been) engaged in several other areas of inquiry, including phenomenology and social theory, cultural theories of volition, as well as a project on institutional barriers to receiving HIV test results.
