Driven by a desire to support parents and families, I started my research career in a family psychology laboratory where I assessed outcomes associated with positive parenting techniques and evaluated the impact of parenting programs. As I progressed in my career, I began to engage more deeply with feminist scholarship, and I was inspired to approach my original goal of supporting families from a new direction. I shifted my research to focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights and I became involved with qualitative methods. I saw how impactful it is to center people’s stories and lived experiences throughout the research process in order to generate solutions and influence policy. Now, I draw on my formal training in psychology, feminist and gender studies, anthropology, and public health to produce community-engaged, interdisciplinary research about sexual and reproductive
health, abortion, contraception, and pregnancy that is rooted in a health equity framework. In 2022, I received the Carole Joffe and Stanley Henshaw Early Achievement in Social Science Research Award from the National Abortion Federation for my contribution to generating abortion-related knowledge.

My research has been funded by Indiana CTSI, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Society of Family Planning, and others. I currently serve on the Editorial Boards for Frontiers in Global Women's Health and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. I have ongoing projects with collaborators in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

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I founded the Pregnancy, Abortion, and Reproductive Rights Research Collective in 2022 when I joined Purdue. I felt that it was important to include the word abortion in the lab name, because too often, people do not speak about abortion or use other coded words (like reproductive health, or "women's" health) to avoid naming it. We also chose the word collective because we are stronger when we work together. PARRRC aims to embody the values of a collective by working thoughtfully and cooperatively, while we value each of our member's unique expertise and experiences. You can learn more about PARRRC's current projects here.