I am an incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin.
I am a sociologist of everyday life. I study how we can spend more of our time living. I am particularly interested in how structural inequalities can be addressed through socially responsible time use policies. My research interests focus on migration, sociotemporal disparities in well-being, eco-social determinants of health, and social demography.
My work has been funded by the UKRI's Economic and Social Research Council, National Science Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, UC Berkeley's Canadian Studies Program, UC Berkeley's Social Sciences Data Laboratory, and by the Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
I have collaborated with the Colchester Borough Council, the Barcelona Time Use Initiative for a Healthy Society, Eurofound, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.
I received my PhD in Sociology and Demography from the University of California, Berkeley. I earned a BA in Sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
When not pondering the minutia of time, I love traveling (preferably by motorcycle, boat, or train), photography (especially ephemeral street art), painting (mainly acrylic), studying internal martial arts (perpetual beginner in chen style tai chi, bagua, hsing-i), binge watching time travel movies (I know... just when you were starting to like me... well, no one's perfect) and playing my handpan and didgeridoos.
Recent Publications
Good Time, Bad Time: Socioeconomic Status, Time Scarcity, and Well-being in Retirement
2022
We tend to think of retirement as a great equalizer when it comes to relief from the pernicious time scarcity characterizing the lives of many in the labor force. Puzzlingly, this is not entirely the case. Using data from the MTUS (N=15,390) in combination with long-term participant observation (980 hours) and in-depth interviews (N=53), I show that socioeconomic characteristics are important determinants of retiree time scarcity. Contextual disadvantage influences well-being outcomes via time exchanges that are forged by both neighborhood and peer network characteristics. The SES-based ‘time projects of surviving and thriving’ undergirding the experience of time scarcity lead to divergent strategies of action and differing consequences for well-being. For the advantaged, the experience of time scarcity is protective for well-being in later life, as it emerges from the ‘work of thriving’ and managing a relative abundance of choices. For the disadvantaged, the later life experience of time scarcity is shaped by cumulative inequality, further exacerbating inequalities in well-being. The final section of the article offers an analysis and interpretation of these results, putting retiree time scarcity in conversation with the broader literature on socioeconomic status and well-being.