I am interested in how human rights categories emerge and are contested within relations of geopolitical power, colonial relations, and gendered, sexual, and racial formations. In particular, I focus on labor exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking. Relatedly, I examine how recognition of harm, such as gender and sex-based violence, can collude with systems of state and colonial violence. I work across the transnational contexts of Russia, East Europe, and the U.S. 

My first book, Economies of Violence: Transnational Feminism, Postsocialism, and the Politics of Sex Trafficking (2015) is an analysis of the resurgence of global anti-trafficking discourse at the end of the Cold War. The central argument is that trafficking is understood as an aberration to economic systems and state policies. This view is the result of the historical confluence of postsocialist neoliberalism with a carceral feminist agenda in which criminal punishment is imagined as the best remedy for complex forms of gendered and racialized economic exploitation. To this day, there is a human rights deficit at the heart of anti-trafficking.

My current work includes a book manuscript on the anti-trafficking moniker "modern day slavery" and essays on sexuality and ethno-nationalism in Russia. I also am involved in several collaborations focused on public education and social justice.  

2026 Graduate Admissions:
Not currently