We live in a world where employment is an expectation and often a requirement for accessing certain safety net supports, such as TANF. Yet, we are also in an era where stable work may be fleeting at best. Given this situation, my research interests have centered on the effects that this precarious condition can have on families' material and emotional well-being.
Currently, I am studying the relationship between families' economic vulnerability and children's social-emotional competence with a focus on family processes. In future research, I plan a continued investigation of the impact of economic vulnerability on family well-being, expanding this inquiry to gain a richer understanding of individual families' experiences with, and responses to, economic vulnerability and the consequent influence on family and child well-being. I am also interested in better understanding intersectionality of identities, particularly those identities that are outside of the dominant culture, and experiences of precarity.
By identifying the interactive effects that system, family, and individual-level experiences can have on the well-being of children and families, my research is intended to build policymakers' and practitioners' understanding of policies' and conditions' impact on families, thereby enabling appropriate policy and programmatic responses to be identified and implemented. In particular, I aim to conduct research that informs social workers' micro- and macro-level responses (ideally in an integrated manner), and by doing so, facilitates social and economic justice and social change.