Biography

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. I work at the intersection of population health, urban sociology, and political economy.

My primary research focus has been revealing the mechanisms through which the housing market entrenches racial inequalities in health. While it’s well known that structural inequalities shape population health, I’ve developed new data and tools to isolate and quantify specifically how factors like redlining, eviction, and housing costs create cumulative disadvantage—and the ways in which different actors profit from these arrangements. Throughout all my work, I use relational sociology to inform analyses of place, race, and class, aligning cutting-edge quantitative methods with careful attention to historical scholarship and causal inference debates. My academic work in these areas is published or forthcoming in Social Forces, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Social Science & Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and elsewhere.

I’m also an active member of the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate policy think tank developing research on the climate and inequality nexus. This work includes collaborations with housing and labor organizers, policymakers, and federal agencies. I’m interested in communicating sociological perspectives to external audiences and building coalitions across academics, policymakers, journalists, and the public.

Download my CV, which links to PDFs of all my publications.

Interests

  • Social Demography
  • Housing
  • Population Health
  • Structural Racism
  • Climate Change
  • Political Economy
  • Environmental Sociology
  • Social Policy

Education

  • Ph.D., Demography and Sociology, 2021

    University of Pennsylvania

  • M.P.H., Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2016

    University of Washington

  • B.S., Psychology and Political Science, 2013

    University of Wisconsin-Madison

Select publications

Public and policy writing

*

Lessons from the study of redlining and health for green housing investment

Lessons from the study of redlining and health for green housing investment

A Green New Deal for Public Housing to Deliver Racial, Economic, and Climate Justice

A Green New Deal for Public Housing to Deliver Racial, Economic, and Climate Justice

COVID-19 in Philadelphia

COVID-19 in Philadelphia for Nikil Saval 2020.

Report: A Green New Deal for American Public Housing Communities

National report for DfP on GND for public housing with interactive maps.

Report: A Green New Deal for NYCHA Communities

Report for DfP on a Green New Deal for NYCHA communities.

Report: A Green New Deal for Suburban Transportation

National report for DfP on GND for suburban transportation.