RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Human rights, regulatory governance, food and agricultural policy, social movements, environmental justice, labor, political economy, science and technology studies.
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
2018 – Assistant Professor of Law, Politics, and Society
Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa
2017 – 2018 Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Law
European University Institute, Florence, Italy
2017 Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Law and Anthropology
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
2015 Visiting PhD Fellowship, Center for International Governance and Justice, Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), Australia National University
EDUCATION
PhD New York University
Anthropology, 2012 – 2017
Dissertation: The Power of the Network: Food Activism, Governance and the Politics of Value in the Pacific Northwest
Advisor: Sally Engle Merry, Silver Professor of Anthropology
MA New York University
Institute for Law and Society, 2012
BA (Hons) The Johns Hopkins University
Anthropology, International Studies, 2003 – 2007
Thesis: Trauma and the Law: Rethinking Transitional Justice in Bosnia
Advisor: Veena Das, Professor of Anthropology
School for International Training: Balkans Program
Zagreb, Croatia, Spring 2006
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Articles
2019 [Forthcoming] “Claiming Food Sovereignty: Legal Mobilization and the Network Imaginary.” Special Issue: Studies on Bringing Rights to Life. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society.
2019 “Compromised Collaborations: Food, Fuel, and Power in Transnational Food Security Governance,” Transnational Legal Theory.
2019 “Banana Brokers: Translating Transnational and Translocal Law.” Public Culture.
2018 “Disputing the Global Land Grab: Claiming Rights and Making Markets Through Collaborative Governance,” 52 Law & Society Review 994–1025.
Special Issues/Edited Collections
2018 [In Preparation] (with Julia Dehm and Marisa Fassi) “Contested Legalities: Translocal Encounters with Transnational Law.” Law & Policy.
Review Essays
2018 “Review Essay: Managing Uncertainty: The Linguistic Transformation of Markets, Governance, and Politics.” Political & Legal Anthropology Review.
Working Papers
2017 [Forthcoming] “Compromised Collaborations: Disputing Biofuels in the Age of the Anthropocene.” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Paper Series.
Academic Blogs
2017 “What Does Trump Mean for Teaching Socio-Legal Studies? Rethinking Race, Law and Sovereignty Through a Global Perspective” Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs.
2015 “Negotiating Rights? Multi-Stakeholder Governance, Global Food Security, and the Right to Food.” Regarding Rights.
Encyclopedia Entries
2013 (with Sally Merry) “Law: Anthropological Aspects.” In: James D. Wright, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, vol 13, pp. 535–541. Oxford: Elsevier.
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2017 Institute for Global Law & Policy Workshop, Harvard Law School, Bangkok, Thailand
2016 NYU Graduate Research Initiative – London, UK
2015 Transnational Law Summer Institute Fellowship, King’s College, London, UK
2013 National Science Foundation, Law and Social Sciences Program
Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reconstructing Rights: New Governance and the Politics of Transnational Agrarian Activism (SES# 1323743)
2012 NYU Graduate Research Initiative – Florence, Italy (Declined)
2012 Pre-doctoral Summer Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University
2011 American Council for Learned Sciences, East Europe Language Training Grant
2010 Foreign Language and Area Studies Scholarship (FLAS), University of Pittsburgh
2009-2015 MacCracken Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Science, York University
AWARDS AND HONORS
2015 Finalist, Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, Graduate Paper Prize
2013 The Thomas Marchione Food-as-a-Human-Right Student Award, Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
2012 Emerging Leader in Political and Legal Anthropology, National Association of Student Anthropologists and Association for Political and Legal Anthropology
INVITED LECTURES
2018 Rights as Process: Mobilizing and Claiming the Right to Food
European University Institute, Florence, Italy
2017 Compromised Collaborations: Disputing Biofuels in the Age of the Anthropocene
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
2017 Translating Nature, Constructing Transnational Law
Department of Gender Studies
National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
2016 “Markets All The Way Down? Networks and Collaboration in Transnational Governance”
Transnational Subjects: Who, How and Where are We Today?
Transnational Law Institute Launch Symposium
The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College, London, UK
2015 Localizing Food Sovereignty in the United States: The Politics of Transnational Translation
Expert Seminar on Localizing Human Rights
Center for Human Rights and Justice, New York University School of Law, New York, NY
2015 The Promise of Participation and the Agony of Informalism: Multi-Stakeholder Governance and Global Food Security
Regulatory Institutions Network, Australia National University, Canberra, Australia
2012 The Politics of Human Rights in Occupy Wall Street
Lecture to Gallatin Human Rights Fellows, NYU
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2016-2017 Adjunct Assistant Professor, Law & Society Program, Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
2016 Adjunct Lecturer, “Law & Society,” Politics Department, New York University, Spring Semester
2015 Adjunct Lecturer, “Anthropology of Food: Graduate Seminar,” Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, Fall Semester
CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS
Sessions Organized
2017 Governing the Anthropocene: Transnational Perspectives
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Mexico City, Mexico
2016 Cultivating Race: Agricultural Labor and the Cultural Politics of Regulation
Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities, Hartford, Connecticut
2013 Constructing ‘Global Governance’: Approaches to the Technologies, Networks, and Processes of Transnational Law and Politics
American Anthropological Association Conference, Chicago, IL
2012 Governance, Scale, and Jurisdiction, Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Graduate Student Workshop
American Anthropological Association Conference, San Francisco, CA
Papers Presented
2018 Constituting the Collaborative Ethic: Regulatory Structures of Ecotopia
Regulatory Infrastructures Workshop, Institute for International Law and Justice, NYU Law
2018 Farm Workers Rising: How Farm Worker Organizations are Responding to Transformations in the Food System Through Innovative Legal Strategies(with Manoj Dias-Abey)
Socio-Legal Studies Association, Bristol, UK
2017 Markets, Movements, and Measurement: Local Food Activism and the Politics of Value in the Pacific Northwest
Measurement and the Making of Markets II: Calculating the Value of Food, Space, and Risk
American Anthropological Association Conference, Washington, DC
2017 Building a Better Banana: Translating Nature, Constructing Transnational Law
Governing the Anthropocene: Transnational Perspectives
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Mexico City, Mexico
2016 From Vernacularization to Collaboration: Rights in the Age of Regulatory Governance
Human Rights Vernacularizations: Essays in Honor of Sally Merry
American Anthropological Association Conference Minneapolis, MN
2016 The Network Imaginary: Ideology and Power in Global Food Governance
Wenner-Gren Workshop on Seeds, Soils, and Politics Santa Cruz, CA
2016 Dispute Transformation and Technologies of Governance
35-Years Later, What Have We Learned About ‘Language, Audience, and the Transformation of Disputes’?
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA
2016 Regulating and Resisting Farm Work: Constructing Race and Nature in The Pacific Northwest
Cultivating Race: Agricultural Labor and the Cultural Politics of Regulation
Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities, Hartford, Connecticut
2015 Seeding Sovereignty: Global Philanthropy and the Construction of Counter-Publics
Going Public / Becoming Private: Public Goods and Hybridity between Government and Industry
American Anthropological Association Conference, Denver, CO
2015 Translation or Equivocation? Asymmetries of Global Power and the Transnational Food Sovereignty Movement
Human Rights in Context
Mid-Atlantic Law and Society Association Conference, New York, NY
2015 Contested Publics and the Common Good: The Rise of Stakeholder Justice Neoliberalization, Legal Reconfigurations, and Future Making
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA
2014 The Shifting Horizons of Social Justice: Rights Claims and the Emergence of Global Governance
Invited Session: Anthropological Approaches to Law, Gender, and Human Rights: Papers in Honor of Sally Engle Merry
American Anthropological Association Conference, Washington, DC
2013 Claiming Food Sovereignty: Social Justice in the Age of Global Governance
Joint Spring Meeting of American Ethnological Society/Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, Chicago, IL
2012 Global Governance in the Food and Agriculture Organization
Mid-Atlantic Law and Society Association Meeting Philadelphia, PA
2012 Radical Rights: Occupy Wall Street and the Emerging Housing Movement
“Uprisings” Plenary Panel
American Ethnological Society Annual Meeting, New York, NY
Discussant
2018 Redistribution, Suffering, and the Human Rights Paradox
Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
2017 Organizational Forms, Objects, and Institutions
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Mexico City, Mexico
2015 Ethnography and Law
Transnational Law Summer Institute, King’s College Dickson Poon School of Law, London, UK
2015 Development, Aid, and Law’s Pathos
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA
ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2014 Coordinator, Africa-US Food Sovereignty Strategy Summit, Seattle, Washington
2013-2015 Member of North American Coordinating Team for the Civil Society Mechanism of the UN Committee on World Food Security
2011 Rapporteur
NYELENI: The European Food Sovereignty Forum, Krems, Austria
2007-2009 Program Associate
Center for Court Innovation, Youth Justice Board, New York City
2007 Coordinator
Human Rights Summer Institute, International Center for Tolerance Education, Brooklyn, NY
2006 Research Intern – Country Programs
International Center for Transitional Justice, New York City
ACADEMIC SERVICE
2015-2018 Graduate Standards Committee, American Association of University Professors
2015-2016 Co-Convener, Transnational Law and Local Struggle, International Research Collaborative, Law and Society Association
2013-2014 Convener, Grant Writing Roundtable, New York University
2012-2013 Co-Organizer, Radical Ethnography Study Group, New York University
2012-2013 Co-Organizer, Public Anthropology Roundtable, New York University
2011 Organizer, Institute for Law & Society Student Conference at New York University
2010-2015 Organizer, Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC-UAW)
LANGUAGES
Spanish (Conversational)
French (Good)
Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian (Intermediate)
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
American Anthropological Association, Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, American Ethnological Society, Law and Society Association, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
