I am an MD-PhD student in Cultural Anthropology. My current research focuses on changing definitions of transnational family in the current era of mass migration. I combine insights from scholarship on migration, kinship, and governance to explore the experiences of communities of people who have migrated from West Africa to North America. Specifically, I focus on kinship as a central force that is producing broader patterns of global movement across racialized, classed, and gendered lines to redefine futures and mobilities. 

In the past, I carried out an ethnographic exploration--funded by a Fulbright US Student Program grant--of the ways in which Mossi women engage with state-sponsored maternal health care in Burkina Faso. In subsequent research, I asked how women in Philadelphia on refugee status make family planning decisions. 

I am influenced by: queer theory,  critical race theory, and black feminist theory and critical geography.

My interests include: migration, kinship, science, technology and society, critical medical anthropology, and postcolonial studies.