I am a social scientist and professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, where I research and teach public and nonprofit management. I received my PhD and MPA from the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia (UGA) and a BA in History from Oberlin College. My research centers language- from organizational mission statements to interviews with individuals- because people use language to make sense of and communicate their understandings of identities, experiences, and broader social structures in which they are embedded. My current research focuses on institutional and organizational change in the nonprofit sector, experiences of (in)equity and (in)justice at work, and knowledge production in the field of public affairs. My research draws on both qualitative and computational (text mining, machine learning, etc.) approaches that have divergent assumptions about whether the meaning of language is fixed, or the outcome of interpretive processes shaped by power.

Interests: text mining, machine learning, bibliometrics, institutional change, institutional logics, knowledge integration