I am currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. My research centers meaning-making and power dynamics in international organizations. I am particularly interested in how international development and foreign aid are encountered in people’s everyday lives, and the meanings, divisions, and struggles that arise from such encounters.
I am a former Fulbright Scholar, Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow, and I’ve received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the America-Japan Society, and the Center for Khmer Studies. I recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
My work is published in Social Problems, Gender & Society, Socio-Economic Review, Sociology of Development, Gender, Work, & Organization, and Contexts. My first peer reviewed journal article, “Activist, Entrepreneur, or Caretaker?: Negotiating Varieties of Women in Development” won the ASA Section on Sex & Gender’s Sally Hacker Best Graduate Student Paper Award in 2019. My most recent article, “The Logic of Patronage: Relational Work in Cambodian International Nongovernmental Organizations” won the ASA’s Granovetter Award for Best Article in Economic Sociology in 2025.
My forthcoming book, Reimagining Aid: Foreign Donors, Women’s Health, and New Paths for Development in Cambodia, will be released by Stanford University Press in January of 2026. The book illustrates that the norms of “global” development, long based on industrialized nations in the West, are being reimagined in Cambodia. Today, in the face of growing inequality and global power imbalances, the post–Cold War narrative of Western liberal democracy and free-market capitalism has faltered. New players on the international scene, many from South and East Asia, have emerged to vie for influence and offer new models of development. Despite these recent changes, however, prominent international aid organizations still work under the assumption there are one-size-fits-all best practices. Through a multi-sited ethnography, my book investigates the intricate interplay between aid donors from Japan and the United States, their competing priorities, and their impact on women's health initiatives in Cambodia. Cambodian development actors emerge not just as recipients of aid, but as key architects in redefining national advancement in hybrid, regional terms that juxtapose "Asia" to the "West." Reimagining Aid is a must-read for anyone invested in Southeast Asia's role in global affairs and evolving definitions of gender in development, and a powerful reminder that the next chapter of global advancement is being written in unexpected places.