Research
I have spent over a decade in higher education teaching and doing research. I am an interdisciplinary scholar who pulls from public administration, human services, psychology, and neuroscience to understand interactions that occur between individuals and the public servants who implement public policy.
I have been especially interested in interactions that occur within an organization or between individuals with disparate amounts of power (teacher/student, public servant/individual, boss/worker, parent/child, etc).
I’m fascinated by all the things that happen when people encounter each other; not the actual encounter itself (like the words, environment, resolution, etc) but more the in-betweens of the encounter, including what each person brings to an encounter (nervous system state, past trauma, etc), how they experience it, and the lasting impact.
My research primarily focuses on interactions that occur within an organization or between individuals with disparate amounts of power (for example: teacher/student, public servant/individual, boss/worker, parent/child, etc).
I’ve explored specific contexts of interactions; for instance interactions between public servants and children, interactions with public servants and unaccompanied migrant children; police departments interacting with their communities, and more.
I’ve also explored a number of methods or tools to support interactions; for instance, social media, empathy, curiosity.
My work is currently focused on exploring dynamics that mediate our interactions, by acting as intervening factors between the inputs and outputs of an interaction.
Here are some of the works I am most proud of. If you would like to read something and can’t access it because it is behind a paywall, send me an email and I will get it to you.