This page includes summaries of current or ongoing research projects and partnerships. Please see my CV or Google Scholar for past projects and/or related publications.
Youth Family Caregivers and the Geography of Childhood (NSF 1853260).In coordination with my advisor and project PI, Dr Betsy Olson, I direct mixed-method research project in collaboration with caregiving youth,
young people under the age of 18 who take on caregiving responsibilities to support a parent, guardian, relative,or sibling who is chronically ill, disabled, or otherwise requiring care for medical reasons. I train caregiving youth to use geospatial and sketch mapping methods to produce data on their experiences of place and emotion. I also conduct interviews and oral histories with caregiving youth. Using qualitative software, I analyze this diverse data to highlight the nuanced and complex ways that youth identities intersect with caregiving and the ways that caregiving shapes the spaces and places available to youth caregivers.
Aging Homes and Aging at Home: Home Repairs and Aging in Community in North Carolina (UNC School of Health Sciences). I lead the Community Practice Lab’s Housing Team, supporting the coordination of the Orange County Home Preservation Coalition (OCHPC). In this role, I oversee the holistic management of home repair needs for OCHPC applicants, maintain our shared database of home repair cases, and, represent UNC in this multi-stakeholder partnership, bridging the gap between research and practice. I lead bi-annual evaluations of the coalition, conducting interviews with residents and practitioners, and leveraging quantitative data from our database, contextualized with Census data and other administrative sources. I also mentor undergraduate and master’s students interested in geographic research on aging and housing.
Orange County’s Master Aging Plan. I lead data collection, analysis, and evaluation of Orange
County, NC’s 2022-2027 Master Aging Plan. I work across the seven domains of age-friendly collaboration: Housing, Health, Civic Engagement, Recreation, Employment, Communication, and Transportation to support workgroups that bring together local government staff and elected officials, nonprofits, and residents to coordinate and implement a community-informed plan to make the county a more inclusive and age-friendly region.