She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University in 2016, and an M.P.A. in Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. Her current research focuses on the relationship between race, social transformations, and communal memory. Her forthcoming book, “Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia” (UNC Press), reconstructs the life histories of a cohort of African Americans who migrated throughout the Appalachian region during the African American Great Migration. This project stems from her dissertation, “Before they were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky’s Coal Camp Blacks”, which earned the 2017 Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association.