As a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, her research examines artistic and communicative practices as constitutive elements of social life. She received her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago in 2014 and has received grants from organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Program. As a faculty member at UW-Madison since 2015, she has been expanding her research on music and state sponsorship in Recife, Brazil. While in residence at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, she will complete her book manuscript, tentatively entitled, “Musical Scales of Belonging in Recife, Brazil."