I am a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.  I am currently doing research and teaching in the area of environmental sociology. I am increasingly thinking about environmental history. I am primarily a qualitative researcher using interviewing, ethnographic and archival methods.  Much of my past research was on gender and childhood in everyday life and constructions of social inequality.

I am currently working on a book about the decade long fight over the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts.  I am also interested in place attachment, gender in environmentalism, and sociology of the climate crisis.

See my freshmen seminar described here as part of the LSA Year of Sustainability.

I teach a wide variety of courses including  sociology of the environment and the climate crisis, sociology of families, honors thesis research and writing, sociology of gender, sociology of childhood, qualitative methods, introduction to sociology. I served as Chair of the Department of Sociology from 2017-2021.  I have also served as Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Sociology. I worked with the Advance Program where I served as Associate Director and participated as member and workshop presenter as part of the STRIDE Committee.  I continue to serve on the ADVANCE advisory board. I work with many students in the joint doctoral program in Social Work and Sociology where I have previously chaired the Supervising Committee for the Joint Program in Social Work and Social Science.

I grew up in Amesbury, MA, received a BA from Hampshire College, and my MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. I have been at the University of Michigan since 1995.