My academic work broadly focuses on issues of governance, knowledge production, economic precarity, and collective action. I have explored these issues through analysis of welfare rights movements in the United States, rural economic resilience in northern California, and most recently socio-economic and legal struggles over the governance of marijuana production in rural California. Within each of these areas, I analyze how marginalized populations are regulated and governed, and the ways in which they challenge and attempt to transform the conditions of their marginality. Currently, I am working on a project to better understand how, and with what effects, students’ aspirations are cultivated across America’s (unequal) institutions of higher education.