Research Statement

Drawing from critical and rhetorical theory, my work interrogates the ways communication and design animate from colonial history to underpin contemporary experiences of public health, biomedicine, and internet infrastructure among marginalized communities, outlining issues of technological and biomedical injustices while foregrounding community perspectives as solutions to such issues. 

My research agenda begins from the notion that 1) medical and technological advancement within Western settings proceed from long histories of colonial enterprise, which implicate 2) the contemporary political machinations of science and technology, notably the ways Big Tech perpetuates colonial expansionism while health and medicine increasingly rely on technology, and 3) the cultural imaginary that, in turn, underpins how people interface with medicine and technology in their daily lives. My research foci stem from my five years working as a community organizer in the Midwest with communities of queer and trans people, Mexican and Mexican American communities, and Anishinaabe and Indigenous peoples. As such, the critical edge of my work is tempered by my deep commitment to the lifeways, knowledges, and problems of such communities, and my theoretical orientation constellates across 1) theories of humanness from Indigenous and Black studies (that is, what corporealities and embodiments are allowed the full breadth of humanity and livability), 2) disability and debility theory (which seek to understand the ways that ability, capacity, and health are mired within colonial processes), 3) and alternative cosmological and epistemological approaches (such as foregrounding Indigenous cosmologies and epistemologies to understand the organizing principles of land). My methodological practice likewise animates from my research foci and disciplinary training, and as a qualitative researcher, I draw upon frameworks grounded in Indigenous studies and digital studies, and I use case studies, qualitative analysis (e.g. social media data, interviews, and discourse analysis), archival work, and rhetorical analysis to interrogate how information and communication shapes human experiences. More critically, however, my projects follow the ways theory appears in the world for the communities I serve. 

For example, in celebrating Día de Muertos and Queerceañeras among Mexican / Mexican American communities, we call into question the onto-epistemological assumptions around celebrating death and joy—throwing a party for the party’s sake and knowing that death is only metamorphosis. In collecting sap during late winter for Sugarbushing in Michigan, I slow down to be in community as part of the Indigenous methodology of visiting—an approach that has much to do with slowing down within a research project as it does with learning from the land and other people. For these reasons, I am especially attentive to humor, joy, and thrivance in my projects. In so doing, I develop and deploy rhetorical theory to render alternative vantages regarding biomedical and infrastructural development while showcasing otherwise mundane rhetorical practices as rich sites for understanding the ways people navigate and counter complex colonial systems. I also ground the answers of my research questions to practicality and applicability, keeping an eye on translating theory into practice to build livable futures for those otherwise discarded and marginalized by colonial powers.

My main book project, Virulent Rhetorics: HIV and Digital Sexual Health outlines and problematizes the manner by which queer and trans people of color are overly prioritized in public health. Virulent rhetorics names a theory of HIV/AIDS discourses that circulate throughout the lives of queer and trans people of color and ties the virus to the biomedical and epidemiological project of identity. The book develops this theory by focusing on the history of the virus as a racializing project, the politics of sexual health as mediated by digital technologies with the advent of pre-exposure prophylaxis (a medication regiment that prevents HIV seroconversion) and doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (taken after sex to prevent a bacterial sexually transmitted infection), cultural ideologies suffused with racist beliefs about queer and trans people of color that affix risk to such identities, and the sociality of the virus amongst those deemed most at risk and how such communities actually contend with prevention and treatment in their own lives. Virulent Rhetorics draws from oral history interviews and social media data to present a corrective to such issues in the form of a refreshed definition of health literacy that accounts for how queer and trans people of color contend with the virus today. A book proposal and sample chapters are currently out for review to Ohio State University Press (Intersectional Rhetorics series), with the editors requesting a full book proposal package to secure an advanced contract.  

My second book project, Loving Fiber Optic Cables, outlines the ways expanding internet infrastructure compels colonial expansionism as global communication thresholds likewise increase due to GenAI while attending to conversations within settler colonial studies, science and technology studies, and Black and Indigenous studies. The book focuses on advancing ethical tools for living in a moment of infrastructural expansion by centering on three general sites across the world: 1) the Atlantic ocean and fiber optic pathways mapped onto Trans-Atlantic slave ship pathways; 2) the desert of Phoenix, Arizona, and data server farms flourishing in desert spaces through the use of sustainability rhetorics; and 3) Arctic ice within the Far North region of Russia, with the receding ice caused by climate change allowing corporations to lay more fiber optics across continents. I am finalizing a full draft of the book—to be submitted by the end of the fall 2026 semester—for peer review at the University of Minnesota Press’s Forerunners series, with the editor both approving my book proposal and requesting the full manuscript.

Finally, I plan to commence research and writing a follow-up book project tentatively titled Seeing Sex, Seeing a Virus, which focuses on the AIDS crisis and how it forced a transformation amongst biopharmaceutical companies and medical advertising to include human bodies and lives to foment particular kinds of attitudes toward sex while comporting behavior ahead of medical adoption. Using archival materials gathered from collections across New York City, Chicago, and Washington D.C., as well as data collected throughout the last six years across gay-specific dating applications, the book argues that the visual culture of HIV medication advertising affirms a racist trope of risk regarding the lives of queer and trans people of color, continuing my work and commitment to redressing issues that such communities face in this strange moment of surveillance and political uncertainty.