I analyze how racism and sound are intertwined in our modern world and manifest in the cultural industries.

My research fuses the sociology of race, organizations, and cultural production with the fields of sound studies, American/ethnic studies, and the history of radio and broadcasting. My scholarship has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America.

The Racialization of Voice in Public Radio

For my dissertation project, Racialized airwaves in the public radio industry, I conducted 83 original interviews with people of color working in American public radio, and I analyzed the archives of public radio housed in Washington, D.C. Drawing on these data sources, I argue that American public radio managers cater to an assumed white, well-educated set of public radio donors by manipulating racialized notions of whose voices are “warm” and “authoritative.” Although managers defend these practices as necessary to create a “sustainable financial future,” these same factors limit the creative freedoms of nonwhite public radio workers and tend to alienate working class listeners of color. The project was a co-winner of the 2023 ASA Dissertation Award. Details here.

Sound as a tool for social change

My second stream of research examines how sound—both in terms of audio production and listening practices— can act as a tool for social change. I have a co-written article forthcoming with Neroli Price at Radio Journal, entitled “Radio drama as a tool for activism in South Africa: The case of Plague in the Time of King Kapital and Queen Corona.” In it, we conduct a close listening of a Covid-19 era radio drama in South Africa. In linking the show to its production and reception, we show how sound may be used as a tool for political conscientization, particularly in times of crisis. My article in the Journal for Radio and Audio Media (available here) highlights how academics and archivists can work together to make sound archives more accessible research materials.

How racial inequalities get reproduced

I am committed to uncovering how racism operates within everyday cultural processes. In addition to my research on how white racialized organizations are formed through fieldwide institutional pressures, I have a stream of collaborative work that uncovers racism in knowledge production and economic life. My co-written Oxford Bibliography entry on Knowledge with prabhdeep singh kehal and Dr. Michael Kennedy foregrounds how dominant knowledges are mediated through the structures of the color line, and how situated knowledges from marginalized communities often offers transformative insights for dismantling these structures. My co-written article with Dr. Daniel Hirschman, “Toward an Economic Sociology of Race”, in the Socio Economic Review charts an agenda for taking the study of race seriously within economic sociology and in the life of markets.