I’m an assistant professor of sociology at UC San Diego, where I research psychiatric services, homelessness, and how communities seek to maintain social order.

My book Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics compares public safety net and elite private psychiatric programs to better understand inequality in mental health care. I have also produced a volume on comparative ethnographic methods, Beyond the Case (with Corey Abramson of U Arizona).

My academic research appears in journals like the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Social Problems.

You can read my public scholarship in outlets like the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times.

Click here to watch a relevant lecture