She is a core faculty member in the Center for African Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Her scholarship focuses on the ways that race, class and gender as interlocking spheres are reflected in maternal and child health, safe water and sanitation, evangelical religious settings and anti-war activism. Her research expertise includes (1) development and testing Africana Feminist methodologies for social analysis and social organizing. She has used insights from this research to study maternal substance use in the U.S., maternal and child health in sub Saharan Africa, and a number of other sites, including work to understand ways to incorporate the safe water and sanitation technologies without reproducing inequality in the sites under study. (2) She has conducted multilevel analyses of child health in the U.S.