Research

I am a medical sociologist and TL1 Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. My research examines how people sustain care, develop expertise, and navigate institutions, and how these processes shape health and inequality. I combine qualitative fieldwork in Italy and the United States with longitudinal population data. Dementia caregiving is the main setting for this work, alongside related research on migrant healthcare access and the recognition of knowledge developed outside professional training.

Current Projects

Caregiving, Capacity, and Health

What allows people caring for someone with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia to sustain both care and a life of their own? Drawing on qualitative research in Italy and the United States, my caregiver flourishing framework identifies four domains: connection, mastery, identity, and meaning. I examine how family relationships, services, and the distribution of care work support or constrain these domains. This approach treats caregiving capacity as relational: what a person remains able to do within a particular arrangement of care.

I am extending this work using the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) and linked data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study and National Study of Caregiving (NHATS/NSOC). Current analyses examine how shared care, family disagreement, and available help relate to caregivers' ability to maintain valued activities, and whether restrictions on those activities predict later depressive symptoms. A related strand examines how well existing survey measures capture the domains of caregiver flourishing. The longer-term goal is to identify features of care arrangements that support caregivers' health and could inform support programs.

Lay Expertise and Recognition

A related theoretical project asks when practical knowledge becomes recognized authority. In Legitimacy Portfolios, I examine how caregivers establish standing with clinicians, relatives, and peers. These audiences recognize different aspects of the caregiver's work, and recognition from one may not secure standing with another. Based on interviews in Italy and the rural Midwestern United States, the project examines how these relationships develop and how support systems help caregivers build them. It contributes to a broader account of expertise, professional authority, and whose knowledge institutions recognize.

Migration and Healthcare Access

My research on healthcare access in Italy examines how legal status, administrative requirements, and interpersonal connections shape people's routes to care. The first study, published in Current Sociology, draws on Nigerian migrants' narratives in Emilia-Romagna to examine distrust, bureaucratic barriers, and the relationships people rely on to obtain care. This work asks how formally inclusive health systems produce unequal access, and how people respond when getting care depends on knowing whom to ask and how to navigate institutional procedures.

Selected Publications and Manuscripts

See my CV for the full list of publications, manuscripts, and presentations.

Awards and Honors