Photo Credit: @aydraj (with editing by @naliniasha_art)

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego where I am also affiliated with the Democracy Lab, the Design Lab, the Indigenous Futures Institute, and the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology.

My research examines public remembrances of the American West through archival methods, ethnographic study, media production, and public history exhibition. I earned my B.A. in American Literature and Culture from UCLA, an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside, and my Ph.D. in Communication from UC San Diego.

My previous postdoctoral appointments include a 2022–2024 UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship where I worked with Prof. David Igler (UC Irvine, Department of History). I was also the Cathryn P. Gamble Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego (working with Prof. Patrick Anderson and Breathable Streets).

I am currently revising a book manuscript, derived from my doctoral dissertation, examining the public remaking of race and place at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. My next major scholarly project examines early histories of oceanic movement and settlement by people of African descent along the Pacific Coast of what is now the United States (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawai'i) in order to stitch together a comprehensive Pacific oriented view of race, migration, and diaspora. The first public component of this project—a traveling banner exhibit, Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific—is toured by Exhibit Envoy, and supported by California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

My public scholarship also includes a California Humanities funded traveling exhibit and Cal Ag Roots podcast series "We Are Not Strangers Here," which shines a light on African Americans in the history of California agriculture and rural communities. This project was produced in collaboration with the California Institute for Rural Studies, the California Historical Society, Susan D. Anderson (History Curator of CAAM), and Exhibit Envoy.

My research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bylo Chacon Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation / US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH), UCSD Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program, the Joseph Naiman Graduate Fellowship, the Frieda Daum Urey Endowed Fellowship, the Qualcomm/Alliance For Empowerment Graduate Scholarship, the UCSD Sixth College Culture, Art, and Technology Artist-in-Residence Program, the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California Project, the Herbert I. Schiller Dissertation Fellowship, California Humanities, and the UC Office of the President.