About Me

I am a sociocultural anthropologist and PhD candidate at the University of Iowa. My work focuses on play, masculinity, queer life, and globalized geek culture, particularly the ways these shape identity and community across digital and analog places.

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My dissertation draws on ethnographic fieldwork with Gaymers in Querétaro, Mexico. I use play as an analytical lens to understand how Gaymers form and maintain queer identities, relationships, and communities while negotiating their place among multiple groups of men. Rather than treating joy, fun, humor, and play primarily as responses to marginalization, I ask what we can learn when they are taken seriously in their own right. This approach makes visible parts of queer life and masculinity that can be overlooked when other concerns determine what we look for from the outset.

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My broader work examines the global movement of geek culture, including videogames, comics, science fiction, anime, and horror, and how it interacts with gender, sexuality, and place. My previous research in Houston, Texas, introduced the concept of equipollent identity to explain how Gaymers manage multiple stigmatized identities without prioritizing one over another. I have also examined gay representation in superhero comics and how queer inclusion in games can move beyond diversity and representation toward more meaningful forms of inclusion.

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My research has been supported through both internal and external funding. From the University of Iowa, I have received the Stanly Award for International Research, the T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Fellowship, and the June Helm Graduate Student Scholarship. Externally, I received a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and was a semi-finalist for the 2023 Fulbright Garcia Robles Award.