R urban / qualitative / gender / religion / inequality / race / culture / death & dying
I am an urban ethnographer. I use qualitative and historical methods, combined with feminist theories, to understand a core sociological concern: how people balance community and individualism. I also study what happens in the absence of community or kinship, when people's lives become shaped by social isolation and neglect rather than connection. For the past ten years, my research has focused on communities in Los Angeles. My first book, Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (University of Chicago Press), draws on more than six years of in-depth fieldwork in an African American-led mosque in South Central LA. I examine what believers do within an Islamic framework to help each other combat poverty, joblessness, violence, and racial injustice. In close detail, readers see the historical effects of economic, demographic, and internal religious changes and, importantly, how believers come together as a community to respond to structural decline. The book has been reviewed in Social Forces, Sociology of Religion, Reading Religion, and New Books in Islamic Studies (includes a podcast interview). Findings from this project also appear in Social Problems, Gender & Society, and City & Community, among other academic journals. Across this body of work, I show how and why members of the mosque prioritize community building as part of their piety.
My next book investigates what happens when people die with no one to claim their bodies. Going unclaimed signals an absence of community and family ties. Yet, it is a fate that will become more common as the death rate in the U.S. rises and people are no longer organizing social life by traditional kinship patterns. While there are some bizarre outliers, our social autopsy shows that the pattern of lonely deaths in the United States isn’t random. Certain categories of people are more vulnerable than others, creating what one expert we interviewed calls a “quiet epidemic” in the U.S. This book will be coauthored with Stefan Timmermans (UCLA) and published with Crown.
Currently, I am an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to the UvA, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University, where I continue to serve as a non-resident research fellow in the Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP). I completed my doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Before academia, I worked as a journalist and media professional. I remain committed to connecting my research to wider audiences. Here are some recent examples on the unclaimed dead in Los Angeles (cited in the NYT), qualitative research in an era of Trump politics, and communities of faith in civil society. I've also recently started a podcast in partnership with the RPLP. According to Feedspot, Religion Unmuted is one of the “Top 35 Religious Podcasts You Must Follow in 2021."
For an updated list of my publications please visit here. And for a copy of my CV, please contact me here.
I am an urban ethnographer. I use qualitative and historical methods, combined with feminist theories, to understand a core sociological concern: how people balance community and individualism. I also study what happens in the absence of community or kinship, when people's lives become shaped by social isolation and neglect rather than connection. For the past ten years, my research has focused on communities in Los Angeles. My first book, Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (University of Chicago Press), draws on more than six years of in-depth fieldwork in an African American-led mosque in South Central LA. I examine what believers do within an Islamic framework to help each other combat poverty, joblessness, violence, and racial injustice. In close detail, readers see the historical effects of economic, demographic, and internal religious changes and, importantly, how believers come together as a community to respond to structural decline. The book has been reviewed in Social Forces, Sociology of Religion, Reading Religion, and New Books in Islamic Studies (includes a podcast interview). Findings from this project also appear in Social Problems, Gender & Society, and City & Community, among other academic journals. Across this body of work, I show how and why members of the mosque prioritize community building as part of their piety.
My next book investigates what happens when people die with no one to claim their bodies. Going unclaimed signals an absence of community and family ties. Yet, it is a fate that will become more common as the death rate in the U.S. rises and people are no longer organizing social life by traditional kinship patterns. While there are some bizarre outliers, our social autopsy shows that the pattern of lonely deaths in the United States isn’t random. Certain categories of people are more vulnerable than others, creating what one expert we interviewed calls a “quiet epidemic” in the U.S. This book will be coauthored with Stefan Timmermans (UCLA) and published with Crown.
Currently, I am an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to the UvA, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University, where I continue to serve as a non-resident research fellow in the Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP). I completed my doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Before academia, I worked as a journalist and media professional. I remain committed to connecting my research to wider audiences. Here are some recent examples on the unclaimed dead in Los Angeles (cited in the NYT), qualitative research in an era of Trump politics, and communities of faith in civil society. I've also recently started a podcast in partnership with the RPLP. According to Feedspot, Religion Unmuted is one of the “Top 35 Religious Podcasts You Must Follow in 2021."
For an updated list of my publications please visit here. And for a copy of my CV, please contact me here.
