I am an interdisciplinary scholar interested in the interactions of environments and technologies in the US Deep South and Appalachia. In my research I use historical evidence and methods to identify root causes of environmental injustices that can provide community members and policy makers with a clearer picture of how material conditions impacting their homes and livelihoods have developed over time. My current book project employs archival evidence, oral history, community engagement, and documentary photography to show how aging large technological infrastructures have adversely affected environmental and community health in the Lower Mississippi Delta for decades, but for centuries their development was closely connected to the Indigenous removal, plantation economies, and racial oppression and disenfranchisement that is the bedrock of environmental racism.

I was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia and completed my PhD research from 2019-2023 in Memphis, Tennessee. I am committed to work that is connected to community and place, to the projects of building a better South for all and protecting the Southern environment, and to Southeastern Native sovereignty and self determination on our ancestral lands.

My work has been generously supported by funding from The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard, The Department of History of Science at Harvard Hiebert Fellowships, Louisiana State University Special Collections Libraries, The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, the Linda Hall Library, and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

I am an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ) and support the Cherokee Scholars’ Statement on Sovereignty and Identity.