The Kansas Cookbook Project
In my Honors Introduction to Sociology course, students use cookbooks from the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection at Mabee Library to examine how trends in technology, culture, and demography have shaped the recipes that are made and shared by Kansans over generations.
My Research
As a researcher, I am interested in how people construct shared meanings around relationships, as well as how institutional contexts shape strategic behaviors. I currently am engaged in three research projects:
- Job referral networks in the Global South: I have a book manuscript titled The Reputation Game, which examines how job seekers in Nicaragua form and mobilize personal ties for low-wage work. I argue that the institutional context of the Global South gives rise to a type of search game I call the reputation game.
- Downward Mobility during the Great Recession: With Steven Lopez, I am investigating how unemployed and underemployed people attempted to avoid downward mobility during the Great Recession and slow economic recovery of 2008-2013. We argue that individual strategies can only be understood relative to the broader context of insecurity and risk wrought by structural shifts in the post-Fordist era. We call for greater attention to the socio-economic mobility of classes rather than individual workers.
- Therapist as a social role: With a former student, I am studying how therapy clients construct understandings of the therapist as a social role. As more people seek therapy for mental illness, relational conflict, or emotional distress, a prominent new social role is being created. What do people expect of the therapist role, and how are these expectations shaped by organizational structures, media portrayals, and interpersonal interactions?