My work as a scholar, like my work on the ground, unfolds through deep and intentional collaborations. The most expansive of these incitements has been the work of building the ‘Otherwise Anthropology’ learning laboratory with my dear friend and colleague Megan Raschig, through which we have been uniting scholars and activists of social movements in North America, East Asia, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Western Europe in sustained conversation. Together, we have published a compendium of our ethical tools and methodological challenges as a Cultural Anthropology ‘Theorizing the Contemporary’ series. I am excited to now be bringing this sustained, collaborative approach to bear within religious studies through a new project on religion, race, health and the state, organized in partnership with my dear friend and Florida State University colleague Jamil Drake.

Through public events and programming, I strive to leverage these collaborations and relationships to address critical issues in the campus communities of which I am a part. These are a few of the events and forums I have organized in service to the academy and movements for social change:

• “30 Years at the Intersections: Justice, Action, and Black Feminist Struggle.” Organizer of a week-long series of engaged conversations, student workshops, and porch talks accompanying Women With A Vision’s Deon Haywood and Shaquita Borden’s work with Dartmouth College and the Upper Valley as Visiting Scholars.
• “Religious Freedom and US Empire.” Organizer of a public talk and series of engaged conversations accompanying Tisa Wenger’s work with Dartmouth College and the Upper Valley community as a Visiting Scholar.
• “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.