Below details some of my current and past research, both while as a graduate student, and as a faculty member at Oakland. Please contact me if you are in need of any pdfs of my published work, or if you are interested in having me discuss my work in a classroom or professional setting.

Current Research: I am currently working on a qualitative project that looks at the expansion efforts of syringe service programs (SSPs) in a Midwestern state that has seen a rapid increase of such programs in the past several years. Specifically, I focus on how the community accepts these programs, how these programs contend with increasing professionalization and bureaucratization, and how they adapted their services during the COVID-19 pandemic. I received funding for this project from the Oakland University Research Council. Please contact me for early drafts stemming from this work, which have been presented at the annual conferences of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) and the International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR).

Past Research: My recently completed project, "Street-Level Bureaucrats and Service Provision to Sex Workers” focuses on the perceptions and responses that social workers and service providers have in working with with sex workers, and how the logics of abstinence (the complete cessation of risky behaviors) and harm reduction (reducing the harm of risky behaviors, without mandating cessation) have shaped their role as street-level bureaucrats and contributed to the use of discretion in this work. I conducted 30 qualitative interviews with service providers, and conducted 100+ hours of participant observation as of October 2018. Findings reveal strong tensions between social workers and law enforcement, which appears to affect the ability to implement harm reduction practices on the frontlines. I received funding for this work from the Oakland University Research Council Research from this work was published in a variety of peer-reviewed publications, including Affilia, Ethics and Social Welfare, and Culture, Health and Sexuality.

I am also currently engaged in collaborative research on hybrid organizing-service organizations with Dr. Rachel Wells, at Lewis University (Published in Voluntas), as well as research on perceptions of prison staff with Dr. Susan Dewey at the University of Alabama (Published in Criminology and Criminal Justice and Corrections: Policy, Practice and Research).

Dissertation Research: In addition to my current work, my dissertation, Sex Worker or Victim of Prostitution?: Collaborations Between Nonprofits that Represent Individuals in the Sex Trade, is a qualitative study based on 14 months of fieldwork, including 54 in-depth semi-structured interviews and 500 hours of participant observation, that investigated the collaborative processes between nonprofit human service organizations and advocacy organizations that represent sex workers. I received external funding for this project from the Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation, as well as university level grants from the School of Social Service Administration and the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.

This research provides insight into two problems that nonprofit managers and community organizers deal with every day: the tension of professionalization and the complexities of collaboration. First, I show how a radical advocacy organization incorporated service provision into their work, expanding their political repertoire and political savvy, enabling them to engage more effectively with and shape the ideas of more traditional nonprofit human service providers. Second, I show how, through informal and formal collaborative processes, advocacy organizations can shape the ideology and service practices of nonprofit human service organizations—and vice versa. I show that collaboration between advocacy organizations can reshape or reinforce the institutional practices of human service organizations working in controversial policy fields, with potentially serious implications for the people they serve. This project has important policy implications for intersectional work around gender, sexuality, race and poverty, while bringing more nuance to how those that work on the front lines of nonprofits and activism think about their work with sex workers, and how they approach advocacy and community engagement in practice.  Research from this work is published in Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership and Governance, Voluntas, Affilia, Sexualities and Culture, Health and Sexuality. Future publications from this research are forthcoming and under review.