State-backed support is largely conditional, yet access has expanded for select groups. Still, eligible recipients, like youth aging out of child welfare, rarely receive the services funded to prevent mental health crises, homelessness, and more. Based on 18 months of Chicago fieldwork, this book project argues that workforce instability disrupts receipt yet sustains surveillance, undermining youth well-being and pushing them toward unstable alternatives.

Funding: National Science Foundation and Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy

Team ethnography is a collective approach to fieldwork that remains undertheorized despite its potential. This manuscript draws on nearly two years of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork on youth suicide prevention to identify the method's strengths and limitations.

Collaborators: Social Worlds & Youth Wellbeing Study, Dr. Anna Mueller, Indiana University – Bloomington

Childcare issues are a common family challenge, yet its implications for maternal health are understudied. Using the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, stress process model, and weighting methods, this project shows how childcare disruptions shape mothers' mental health.

Award: Best Poster Award, Section on Health and Health Behavior, PAA

The termination of parental rights (TPR), the legal severing of parent-child bonds, is one of the most punitive state actions into the family. Linking over 10 years of administrative data, this study uses hybrid models to show that carceral contexts amplify TPR, especially for fathers of color.

Award: Best Graduate Paper, Sociology and Social Welfare Division, SSSP