I am a life course scholar focused on the transition to adulthood: how young people make decisions about education, work, mobility, and family life, and how those decisions are conditioned by institutions and unequal opportunity structures.
My theoretical orientation centers institutional mediation: the idea that aspirations and choices are not simply individual preferences, but are formed and constrained within organizational environments, social networks, and broader stratification regimes.
Much of my work is supported by two large-scale data collection projects: Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes (FAMELO) and the First-Generation Student Study. Together, these projects let me trace how institutions shape perceived possibilities and lived trajectories over time.
Methodologically, I use longitudinal and mixed-method approaches to connect lived experience with durable patterns of inequality.
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FAMELO examines how family migration shapes children’s and adolescents’ educational trajectories, wellbeing, aspirations, and family formation across distinct migration contexts. Using longitudinal panel data in comparative perspective, the project traces how migration-related resources and constraints intersect with local institutions to shape early life transitions.
Selected publications
This project examines how institutional cultures and everyday academic practices shape first-generation students’ educational experiences and longer-run pathways. I focus on how advising structures, peer networks, and organizational expectations can differentially support or constrain students’ trajectories, especially when institutional assumptions about resources and know-how do not match students’ lived realities.
Selected publications