My research focuses on the political, environmental, and technological dimensions of disasters. My current book project, (forthcoming with Duke University Press), entitled Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka, examines the intersections of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the decades-long civil war which ended in 2009 in Sri Lanka. I am currently developing a new project on climate change and sea surface warming - a slow-moving disaster - in the Indian Ocean. I am also affiliate faculty in Race, Ethnic, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Environmental Studies. 

I received my B.A. in Anthropology (with a minor in Gender and Feminist Studies) from Pomona College.  I received my M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology (with a designated emphasis in Social Theory and Comparative History) from the University of California, Davis. Before coming to St. Olaf, I was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Society for the Humanities and the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. And I also taught at the University of Tennessee's program on Disasters, Displacement and Human Rights for two years. 

My research and writing have been supported by the Fulbright-Hays, the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Fulbright Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Courses Taught:

SOAN 128 Introduction to Anthropology

SOAN 292 Anthropological Theory

SOAN 247 Disasters

SOAN 262 Global Interdependence

SOAN 293 Environmental Anthropology

ENVS 281 Environmental Justice