Her research interests include race and ethnicity, social mobility, urban inequality, cultural sociology and qualitative research methods. Her work has focused on the experiences of African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era, including how they conceptualize their social mobility prospects and their strategies for navigating persistent racism and discrimination. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled “Keep on Pushin’ ” that uses in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations to explore how working class and middle class African Americans in Detroit navigate the city’s crumbling infrastructure. In January, she co-authored an for The Root that carried the headline “How a Racist System Has Poisoned the Water in Flint, Michigan.” She obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2011.