I study contemporary institutions of social control – the child welfare system and the criminal justice system – that both reflect and reinforce social inequalities, showing how institutional contact is affected by algorithmic risk scores and the state’s propensity to intervene in the lives of vulnerable populations, and how such contact in turn shapes health and family outcomes.

This research is built on a theoretical and substantive interest in the history of privacy and surveillance in the modern United States. In my book (at Columbia University Press), I examine the historical origins of America’s fragmented privacy architecture and demonstrate that the uneven legibility of different populations and types of information is built on a foundation of legally codified exceptions.

Other work explains unexpectedly low Black/White mortality disparities during the 1918 pandemic and assesses the impact of data suppression rules on the privacy of vulnerable children in Child Protective Services datasets.

My research is partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Rockwool Foundation and has won multiple awards—including the Theda Skocpol Award for the best dissertation in historical sociology, several ASA section paper awards, and the Herbert Blumer Prize and Public Sociology Prize from the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology.