Biography

I am an ethnographer whose research explores the relationships between transnational political economic processes and the making of lives, communities, and landscapes. My major research projects have involved ethnographic fieldwork in Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. I have worked on themes of transnational labor migration, human trafficking and global governance, and the international trade in forestry products. Threading through these topics is my interest in how everyday encounters shape landscapes and the lives of beings that inhabit them, both human and otherwise. My work, if grounded in questions central to cultural geography, is multidisciplinary, drawing broadly from across human and physical geography as well as from feminist studies, cultural anthropology, queer theory, science and technological studies, environmental studies, migration studies, critical race theory, indigenous studies, and international legal studies. I bring to all my research and teaching a commitment to understanding how intersecting axes of difference—gender, sexuality, race, class, citizenship, religion, geography, and able-bodiedness—shape cultural and spatial processes. My primary appointment at UCLA is in Geography, but I also hold a courtesy appointment in Gender Studies and serve on the advisory committees for the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and the Center for the Study of Women (CSW).