Research & Strategy

Research that helps organizations better understand people and respond thoughtfully to complex questions.

From dementia caregiving and health equity to women's empowerment, gender, and representation, my work combines qualitative research, literature synthesis, and interdisciplinary thinking to better understand people, evaluate existing approaches, and inform future programs and initiatives.

Health, Care & Caregiving

Research exploring the lived experience of care, caregiver identity, and opportunities to strengthen systems that support individuals, families, and communities.

Conference Paper · American Men's Studies Association (2026)

Representing the Black Male Family Dementia Caregiver

How can cultural representation shape caregiving identity?

Examines the Academy Award-winning film American Fiction through a dementia caregiving lens, exploring how cultural representation may influence perceptions of Black male family caregivers and expand conversations around masculinity, care, and community.

Key Insights

Representation shapes not only how caregivers are perceived by others, but also how individuals may come to understand themselves as caregivers.

Graduate Research, Curriculum · New York University

Interrogating Arrangements of Unpaid Dementia Care

How is unpaid family dementia care organized and what alternatives might exist?

Developed an interdisciplinary graduate seminar examining the history, economics, ethics, and future of unpaid family dementia caregiving, drawing together scholarship from sociology, feminist theory, disability studies, economics, philosophy, and public policy.

Key Insights

Understanding caregiving requires looking beyond individual caregivers to the broader social, economic, and political systems that organize care.

Graduate Research · New York University

The Fulcrum of Dignity

What changes when we place the caregiver at the center of care?

Developed a conceptual framework positioning unpaid family dementia caregivers as the fulcrum through which dignity flows toward, or away from, the person receiving care, calling for interventions that support caregivers materially as well as emotionally.

Key Insights

Supporting caregivers is not simply about improving caregiving skills, but about strengthening the conditions that allow dignity to be sustained throughout the caregiving relationship.

Exploratory Qualitative Research Study · New York University

Understanding the Lived Experience of Family Caregiving

What can we learn by listening closely to family caregivers?

Designed and conducted an independent qualitative study with adult daughters caring for parents living with dementia. Through in-depth interviews, literature review, and thematic analysis, explored caregiver identity, responsibility, administrative burden, and changing family relationships over time.

Key Insights

Listening closely to caregivers reveals dimensions of care that often remain invisible, including identity, dignity, and the everyday work that sustains families living with dementia.

Program Strategy & Development

Research and strategic planning to inform program design, community engagement, and organizational decision-making.

Program Strategy & Landscape Research

Strengthening Women's Empowerment Programming

How can community-based programs better support women's empowerment?

Conducted extensive landscape research to inform the development of women's empowerment programming in Bangladesh. Reviewed nonprofit initiatives, public awareness campaigns, entrepreneurship programs, and youth engagement models, translating those findings into four strategic reports and a five-branch program model.

Key Insights

Effective community-based programming brings together education, entrepreneurship, public awareness, and local engagement rather than treating them as separate initiatives.

Program Development

Creativity Journal for Women

How can a regular creative practice encourage reflection and personal growth?

Designed a year-long creativity journal built around monthly themes, weekly writing exercises, and a curated collection of 365 quotations to encourage creative exploration and sustained engagement.

Key Insights

Small, consistent creative practices can foster reflection, curiosity, and personal expression over time.

Research Study

Understanding Creative Workspaces

How do physical work environments shape creative communities?

Researched Santa Monica's coworking landscape through literature review, field visits, and comparative analysis to better understand relationships between creative industries, workspace design, and professional collaboration.

Key Insights

Creative communities are shaped not only by the people within them, but also by the environments and networks that support collaboration.

Gender, Representation & Identity

Research exploring identity, representation, embodiment, and the stories societies tell about gender.

Master's Thesis · University of Amsterdam

The Multiplicitous Movie Heroine

How are women represented in contemporary blockbuster films?

Designed and applied a rhizomatic feminist film analysis framework to examine representations of female protagonists in Wonder Woman and Rogue One, exploring identity, agency, and spectatorship.

Key Insights

Representations of women become more meaningful when understood as multiple, evolving, and interconnected rather than measured against a single ideal.

Graduate Research · University of Amsterdam

Doing “Woman” Right

How is body shame learned and reproduced?

Used autoethnography to examine body shame as a form of heteronormative feminine gender performativity and explore how cultural expectations become internalized.

Key Insights

Body shame functions not simply as an individual experience but as a social practice shaped by gendered expectations.

Participatory Action Research Proposal · University of Amsterdam

Body, Sex, Home, Woman

What does it mean to feel “at home” in one's body?

Developed a participatory research proposal exploring how women describe their relationships with their bodies and how language influences experiences of identity, embodiment, and belonging.

Key Insights

The ways people speak about their bodies shape how they experience themselves and the world around them.

Exploratory Graduate Research · University of Amsterdam

“When I'm Really Judging Myself…”

How do women understand the relationship between body shame and identity?

Through five one-on-one interviews, explored whether experiences of body shame are understood as an expression of the self or as something experienced as separate from the self.

Key Insights

Examining the relationship between shame and identity opens new ways of understanding embodiment, self-perception, and personal agency.

Work with me