Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
PhD, Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, 2014
I specialize in cultural and medical anthropology, focusing on militarized and nuclear spaces and the political economy of health. My current research examines the socio-cultural legacies of Soviet-era nuclear testing in Kazakhstan and how people navigate everyday life in a damaged environment polluted with residual radioactivity. Specifically, I research the local understandings of health, livelihood, violence, and suffering from the perspective of rural communities living in and around the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site and who were subjected to hundreds of Soviet Cold War atomic tests. I am also working on a collaborative project that looks at the Anthropocene epoch as the radioactive afterlife of the Cold War. Specifically, this project examines former atomic proving grounds in Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands, and French Polynesia. My other interests include science studies, specifically scientific debates about low-dose radiation exposure, radiation research on animals, as well as corruption and contemporary politics in Russia and the United States.
Critical Ecologies 