I am a sociologist working at the intersection of sociology, public health, and neuroscience, with a central focus on how inequality becomes embodied. My research examines how race, gender, and ethnicity shape neural processes, health outcomes, and intergroup relations—while also exploring the ways individuals and communities resist and transform these effects.

Methodologically, I combine large-scale cross-national survey analysis with experimental neuroscience, including fMRI, to connect the lived experience of inequality to its structural and institutional roots. Working within the growing field of neurosociology, my scholarship advances an interdisciplinary agenda that integrates sociological theory with cognitive science to reveal how injustice literally gets under the skin, and how culture, values, and civic life can foster resilience.

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Research Areas

🧠 Neural and Social Pathways of Inequality
I examine how systemic inequalities—particularly those based on race, gender, and ethnicity—shape mental health, emotion regulation, and identity across the life course. Using survey data, experimental methods, and neuroimaging, I study how discrimination, exclusion, and chronic stress are encoded in the brain, and how these processes manifest in health disparities. My forthcoming book, The Racialized Brain: The Neurosociology of Race and Racism (Polity Press, in press), synthesizes this line of research and argues for a deeper understanding of how inequality becomes biologically embodied.

🌍 Culture, Values, and Moral Cognition in Diverse Societies
This strand of my work explores how cultural frameworks, moral emotions, and social values influence intergroup relations. I investigate how civicness, empathy, and moral cognition can both reproduce and resist inequality, shaping patterns of solidarity, trust, and inclusion across diverse societies. By bringing together insights from sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience, I show how cultural contexts structure the moral foundations of belonging and exclusion.

⚙️ Technology, Policy, and Global Inequality
I also analyze how technologies and policies intersect with structural inequalities at local and global scales. This includes examining disparities in STEM and health domains, tracing how institutional practices reproduce inequality, and identifying interventions that foster resilience, equity, and inclusion. Through this work, I aim to connect individual and neural-level processes to policy debates and institutional change.

See a list of my publications.