Through a praxis of navigating multiple worlds, I work to foster reciprocal relationships among academics, activists, journalists, artists, and other visionary practitioners. My research spans themes of imprisonment, immigration, migration, sexuality, discipline, and social movements. In partnership with academic colleagues and movement comrades, I have curated conversations that not only contribute to our understanding of the role of religion in the formation of secular modernity, but also illuminate the complex ethics of survival, struggle and renewal among those who have traditionally been constructed as out-of-time and out-of-place by the intersecting logics of colonialism and criminalization.

These are a few of the events and forums I have organized in service to the academy and movements for social change:

• “Wounds and Worlds: Spiritual healing as politics otherwise in California.”
  Organizer of a public talk and series of engaged conversations accompanying Megan Raschig’s work with Dartmouth College and the Upper Valley community as a Visiting Scholar.
• “Medicalizing the Souls of Black Folk: Public Health & the Governance of Black Religion in the American South.”
  Organizer of a public talk and series of engaged conversations accompanying Jamil Drake’s work with Dartmouth College and the Upper Valley community as a Visiting Scholar.
• “Theory on the Ground: religion and spirituality, repressing and redeeming the struggle for justice.”
  Co-Organizer of a panel hosted at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, November 2015.
• “Making Time: Discipline and Religion in America’s Prisons.”
  Co-Organizer of a panel hosted at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, April 2015.
• “Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?: Religion and the Burdens of Black Sexual Politics.”
  Graduate Coordinator of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS) annual conference at Columbia University, hosted in partnership with the Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice (CARSS), October 2014.
• Religion and Incarceration.
  Co-Founder of a collaborative forum for activists and academics to explore religion, power and the ends of mass incarceration, January 2014.
• “Religion on the Move: Movement, Migration, Missions and new Media across Religious Traditions.”
  Co-Coordinator of the Columbia Religion Graduate Students Association’s annual conference, which hosted papers from more than sixteen young scholars representing twelve universities nationwide, April 2013.
• “Migrant Imaginaries: Religion on the Move in the African Diaspora.”
  Co-Organizer of an opening panel for the Religion Graduate Students Association conference, hosted in partnership with the Religions of Harlem project, April 2013.
• “Fencing in God.”
  Co-Organizer of the Institute for Religion, Culture, & Public Life (IRCPL) three-part series on religion, incarceration and immigration, featuring “Guadalupan New York” (February), “Religion and Incarceration” (March), and “Immigration Detention” (April), Spring 2013.

Outside of the academy, I serve as an ongoing advisor to:

• ‘Prisoner to Patient’ project in New Orleans.
• Men and Women In Prison Ministries in Chicago.
• Reconstruction, Inc. in Philadelphia.