About

I currently serve as the director of Foundation and Corporate Relations at Carthage College, where I have also taught courses in anthropology, classics, history, sociology, and qualitative research methods. As an Applied Anthropologist, my research focuses on the reinvention and revitalization of place through art and performance. Both in my teaching and research I focus on asking different kinds of questions, finding new avenues of inquiry into spaces that we think we know. At the core of all my scholarly activity is the question, “How do people imagine their future?” Whether focusing on the reinvention of place, or young people’s first steps on a college campus, I am centrally concerned with how people deal with uncertainty and attempt to exert agency on their changing social worlds.

This website is an exploration of the various angles of approach that I take to answer that question, from my ethnographic research in Northern Ireland, to the Core Curricula I teach, and the alternative assessment methodologies in which I attempt to capture the intangible outcomes of a liberal arts education. In my blog, The Left Hand of the Humanities, I discuss these experiences and reflect, with an ethnographer's inquiring eye, on my work at the crossroads of the humanities.