I am an Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Occidental College in Los Angeles. My teaching and research focus on religion in the Americas, with particular attention to the United States and Brazil. My primary research interests lie at the intersection of death, urban space, and memory. I am interested in how mortuary practices and the ritualized engagement of the dead—whether through mediumship, prayers, ghost hunting, or memorialization—shape and shade urban landscapes. My first book, Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil (UNC Press, 2025—use code 10SOCIAL30 for 30% off), explores these themes through an ethnography of a practice known as the devotion to souls (devoção às almas) or cult of the souls (culto das almas). In doing so, it addresses broader questions that I see as central to the story of religion in the Americas, such as how modernization foists uneven opportunities, economic development, and patterns of social violence that haunt—figuratively and literally—contemporary urban spaces.

My research for Moved by the Dead led to ongoing work with two activist collectives in São Paulo: UNAMCA (the União dos Amigos da Capela dos Aflitos/Union of the Friends of the Chapel of the Afflicted) and the broader Movimento dos Aflitos (Movement of the Afflicted). Both organizations are aimed at recovering and preserving Afro-Indigenous memory in Liberdade, a “Japanese” neighborhood in central São Paulo. I am also part of the Remedies Collective, led by Prof. Andrew Britt, which is working to create an augmented reality (AR) memorial to São Paulo’s Church of the Remedies, which was a nexus in the state abolitionist movement and a museum of slavery until its demolition in 1942.

My next project extends the concerns of my first book by interrogating the place of religion in the epistemological foundations and contemporary articulations of modern urbanism. It contributes to ongoing conversations in urban studies, religious studies, and critical geography by foregrounding the role of religious imaginaries—both explicit and latent—in shaping the spatial, moral, and political rationalities that underwrite urban planning. Contemporary urban planning emerged from a modernist zeal for development—of populations and races, of national capacities, and of cities as engines of transformation. Although new urbanism has rejected the heavy-handed reforms of midcentury planners, it too stems from ideological commitments with religious roots and affinities. In tracing these affinities, I seek to theorize how religious imaginaries continue to undergird projects of urban transformation, shaping the moral geographies of the cities we build and inhabit.

I received my Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2017. I also hold an M.A. in History of Religions from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Religious Studies and Psychology from Lehigh University. Before arriving at Occidental College, I was a visiting professor in religion at Oberlin College (2016-2017) and Amherst College (2018-2019). I was born and raised in northern New Jersey, a fact of which I am more proud than I should be.